Chris Bandi

Back Porch Sippin'

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Chris Bandi is a firm believer in music's power to unify others. He has a multifaceted voice that immediately resonates with any soul listening. And his music gives a natural sense of roots for those who need it most because he is among the few artists making music in Nashville today to have lived in three of America's most musically sacred places. Bandi is proud to follow in the lineage of legendary musicians from his native St. Louis. He was raised on his father's taste in obscure rock with a heavy dose of his mother's affinity for '90s country music. He remembers CDs being on the grocery list as a child and browsing the aisles of the city's many great record shops. The soundtrack riding with friends to high school football practice was a mix of Kenny Chesney, Tim McGraw and fellow St. Louisan, Nelly. However, performance became life after attending his first concert where he saw Garth Brooks fly over the audience in a harness at St. Louis' Enterprise Center. In high school, he started his first band, a rock outfit that played throughout the city, including the iconic Duck Room at Chuck Berry's Blueberry Hill. He continued music in college at the University of Mississippi at Oxford by playing in a cover band with an alternative ambition to mostly get into bars and drink for free. It was his time in Mississippi that enriched a deeper dive into country music. The songs of early Luke Bryan and Eric Church spoke to the life he was living at the time. He honed his craft relentlessly playing the same small clubs that built Bryan and Church's loyal followings in college towns within a reasonable driving distance of Oxford Six days after receiving his degree in marketing and communications in 2013, he moved to Nashville to become a professional musician. He arrived with 100 original songs, and his first place was a friend's closet, where he slept on an air mattress. In his first few years in Music City, he got by on the money he made going back to play gigs in Oxford and St. Louis on the weekends. During the week, he treated Nashville writers' rounds and open mic nights as if they were their own tour, and he played constantly. Within two years of his arrival in town, he reconnected with booking agent Brendan Rich, a college friend he knew through music at Ole Miss, and wrote a song with hit-makers Jason Massey and Jason Duke that would change everything for him.
Chrisbandi.com

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