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The Morning Brew with Chris Bennett
Ever wonder what really goes on at a small-town morning radio show?
The Morning Brew with Chris Bennett and Best Friends is your daily dose of real callers, big laughs, and unforgettable characters straight from QCountry 925 in Show Low, Arizona.
The Morning Brew with Chris Bennett
Labor Day Fun, Sweet Corn Fest, and Chace Saunders’ Country Climb
As Labor Day weekend approaches, the White Mountains region bursts with activity and excitement. Jineane Ford joins us to spotlight the Sweet Corn Festival with its charming small-town parade, arts and crafts, corn hole tournament, and live entertainment featuring Ashley Westcott and Avery Irving. Don't miss the Vaquero Productions Harvest Rodeo or Monday's pie party at the historic Shumway Schoolhouse with the Mountain Air Brass Quintet.
Meanwhile, Springerville hosts its 14th annual Rib Throwdown through Saturday, and Show Low presents the Battle of the Bands and Vans at Frontier Fields – complete with food trucks, craft vendors, a Kid's Zone, and Beer Garden for just $5 admission (free for under 12s). With gas prices at a four-year low, it's the perfect weekend to explore our mountain communities!
The highlight of today's show is our Country Climb interview with Chace Saunders, a Kentucky native making waves in Nashville. Chase shares his remarkable journey, beginning with his first guitar at age eight and deeply influenced by his family's rich musical heritage – from a great-grandfather who handcrafted banjos to relatives steeped in gospel and bluegrass traditions. His musical influences span from James Taylor to Frank Ocean to Keith Whitley, creating a sound uniquely his own.
We're thrilled to premiere Chace's new song "Catch and Release," written in just two hours before a show in Owensboro. This fishing tale set to music captures the essence of rural Kentucky life with moonshine adventures and close calls. Chase will be touring Arizona in mid-October, hitting Flagstaff and Phoenix – follow him on social media as Chace Saunders Music to catch those dates.
Before wrapping up, we spotlight the upcoming Best of Phoenix Comedy Showcase at Pinedale Community Center on September 20th featuring Lamar Mitchell Jr, Cricket Gill, and more. Tickets are selling fast at chrisbennettcomedy.com! And don't forget this weekend's Navajo Taco Dinner and Bake Sale supporting the Pinedale Heritage and Community Center.
From the Horn Auto Center Studios, chris Bennett and the Morning Brew. What's happening? Hot stuff. Let's check in with Janine Ford and find out what's happening in the White Mountains. Janine, you over there.
Speaker 2:Yes, I am. How are you?
Speaker 1:I'm doing great on this Friday morning.
Speaker 2:Ah, loving the rain this morning, so beautiful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, such a great day in the White Mountains and I was checking in to find out what's happening in the White Mountains. There's a lot happening this Labor Day weekend. Do you want to go first or me go first?
Speaker 2:Yeah, super, I can go first. And you know what I love is people coming up the hill and everything else. It was announced that we have the lowest gas prices in four years. That's really nice for people traveling. So the sweet corn festival oh my gosh, I get so excited for this every year and, uh, it's, it's awesome. They have all sorts of things going up and going on and you know, what's great is being up here and being able to go to a small town, experience, experience the corn Sweet Corn Festival. They have several growers out there and they have all sorts of things. And the Taylor Rodeo Ground's going on. They're going to have a parade at 10 am tomorrow. They've got arts and crafts, corn hole tournament okay, yeah, and they've got really really live entertainment with Ashley Westcott and Avery Irving, I believe yeah, I'm saying the name right there, okay, and all sorts of I mean food vendors, you name it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And Vaquero Productions. They're going to host their Harvest Rodeo. I mean all sorts of things going on.
Speaker 1:Heck yeah. It's going to be a lot of fun, and if you've never been to a small town parade, you are missing out.
Speaker 2:It's so cute, it's so wonderful. And also, what I love, don't forget about Shumway. Okay, at the old Shumway Schoolhouse, on Monday at 5pm they have a pie party featuring the Mountain Air Brass Quintet. Yes, on Monday, so it goes all through Labor Day and Monday you have the pie at Shumway Historic Schoolhouse, which I really love.
Speaker 1:Heck, yeah, sweet. Now it's my turn to tell y'all what's happening here in the White Mountains this Labor Day weekend. If you're in Springerville, they're having their 14th annual Springerville Rib Throwdown. It actually started yesterday and goes through Saturday. For more information, go to bwbcharitiesorg for the information on that fun event.
Speaker 1:And here in Show Low it's the Battle of the Bands and Vans food vans at Frontier Fields. It's going to be a lot of fun. It starts tomorrow at 10 am, goes to 9 pm, janine. There's going to be a lot of fun. It starts tomorrow at 10 am, goes to 9 pm, janine. There's going to be a ton of food trucks. People will be able to vote on their favorite food trucks and then there's going to be a ton of bands playing music as well and you could vote for your favorite bands. There's a Kid's Zone, there's Craft Vendors, there's a Beer Garden and it's only $5 admission and if you're under 12, it is free. So fun events going on all over the mountain on this Labor Day weekend. Make sure you travel safe and be nice to everyone here on the mountain.
Speaker 2:Oh, sweet that's awesome. That's everything right there, that's everything Heck.
Speaker 1:Yeah, If you're bored this weekend on the mountain, it's your own fault.
Speaker 3:Exactly, exactly.
Speaker 1:All right, Janine, we love you. Have a great weekend. Love you too, Chris.
Speaker 2:Have a good one.
Speaker 1:Bye-bye, bye-bye, chris Bennett's Country Climb star of the week. This week it's Chase Saunders, baby Originally from Kentucky, now making big things happen in Nashville. Chase, welcome aboard, best friend, thank you for having me. Man, love the energy. Heck, yeah, you know it. Well, before we get into the nitty gritty, I always like to start each Country Climb interview with little rapid fire questions.
Speaker 3:Are you ready?
Speaker 1:Yes, let's do it All right. Originally from Kentucky, corvette or pickup truck.
Speaker 5:I just recently switched to pickup truck. I've had my first pickup truck for the first time in a long time.
Speaker 1:Heck yeah, sweet First job growing up.
Speaker 5:First job growing up was a busboy at the local diner down the street from my house. How old were you? I was 15 or 16. I'm pretty sure I was 15. It was the only place that would give me a job at 15.
Speaker 1:Kentucky bourbon or Nashville hot chicken. Kentucky bourbon all day, all day. Bluegrass or country music. Bluegrass music, because you're a little hybrid of both, right.
Speaker 5:Yeah, a little bit, a little bit. My whole family's bluegrass musicians, so I grew up with it.
Speaker 1:And yeah, your grandpa was a banjo maker, right.
Speaker 5:Yes, yeah, he wanted a banjo. So bad growing up that he decided to start making his own, and then he turned it into a lifestyle. Heck yeah first album you ever bought, first album I ever bought. That might have been like a james taylor record. Um, that's like literally on vinyl and it was like maybe at a target or a vinyl store or something like that, but it was definitely james taylor and last question this is the hardest one.
Speaker 1:You'll get asked all day. If you had one country song to request for the rest of your life, you could only request one song for all events. What country song are you requesting and why?
Speaker 5:In Color by Jamie Johnson, Mostly because I think it might be one of the best songs not just country ever written and I don't think I could ever get tired of playing, hearing that song and I know that everybody I play it for always loves it and sings along, so it brings the energy. It's a great sing-along song. It's one of my favorite songs of all time.
Speaker 1:Chase, we had some fun with rapid fire questions. Now let's find out how it all started for you. Let's find out about your country climb and how music grabbed a hold of you.
Speaker 5:Well, I started playing guitar when I was eight years old. My dad got me my first guitar for Christmas and I think it even started before that. I remember when I was a kid and dad was always playing the guitar and I would be strumming with one hand and he'd be holding the chords with the other hand and I kind of felt like I was a country star already doing that, maybe five or six years old. And my whole life I've been surrounded by music. My extended family on my mom and dad's side they're all musicians and there's a lot of rich, you know, christian music. That goes through my family.
Speaker 5:My great-grandmother wrote gospel songs and ballads and my great-grandfather made banjos with his bare hands. He made them from scratch and growing up all my life was surrounded by Appalachian or Appalachian country music and bluegrass music. And then when I got older I started playing for the church and I started playing around town playing gigs at like yogurt shops and like city squares and it kind of took off from there. When I went to college I formed a band and then COVID hit and then, after COVID kind of like let up, I continued playing music solo and I started getting a little bit better at it, getting a little more comfortable with my sound, writing songs. And when I started writing songs is when I decided to make a move to Nashville. Been here for about three. Well, I've been playing music down here for about three years, but I've been here for almost four now and, yeah, started to put out a song recently. It's the first one I found out in a while.
Speaker 1:So we're getting the ball rolling again and we are going to be playing that new one coming up in a little bit. But first it's time for musician questions. With a musician, here we go. Top three musical influences.
Speaker 5:Top three musical influences. I love James Taylor. I think he's a phenomenal songwriter and I grew up with his music. The person who got me into singing, oddly enough, was a pop artist, frank Ocean. I remember hearing him for the first time when I was growing up. I had a friend who was really into hip-hop and he was really into R&B and pop music. He introduced me to Frank Ocean. I hadn't really tried singing before, but his voice just completely inspired me. I tried to sing some of his songs before, but his voice just completely inspired me. So I tried to sing some of his songs. I got old videos of me butchering his music and I was not happy with the performances at all. But he was a big influence. So James Taylor, frank Ocean and you know, recently I've been listening to in the in the country realm. I just always loved Keith Whitley. Growing up, keith Whitley was always a staple with my family.
Speaker 5:I mean just him being from Kentucky and he's got a lot of songs that reference Kentucky, and so I've been hearing Keith Whitley my entire life and he's just always been there.
Speaker 1:It's now time to play one of your new songs that you wrote yourself. Tell us a little bit about Catch and Release, how it came about.
Speaker 5:Yeah. So Catch and Release is crazy. I got a call from some friends in Kentucky who started a band and they needed somebody to open for them one night at the show. And so I woke up the morning of the show to go open for these guys and I love them, they're called the Sons of Habit and they kill it. Every show they kill it. And I was like you know what? I don't have a song that quite crushes as hard as their music does. I'm like I need something that I can just close with and everybody can be left there. And they're like, wow, that's what this guy's about. And so I woke up up that morning, played the song, kind of decided I had a tune in mind and I had no lyrics to it. And so I was like, you know, I got to get on the road, so I just recorded it really fast on my phone, two-hour drive to Owensboro, kentucky, where the show was. In that two-hour drive I wrote the entire song Catch and Release, and what I had in mind during this.
Speaker 5:It's a fishing reference and a fishing song. It's about a fishing story gone bad, essentially, and when I was growing up, my dad and I and my sister, we used to fish all the time. Anywhere there was a body of water, we'd break out the rods, we'd get on a canoe or we'd stand on the shore and we'd be fishing. And when we woke up at like before school some mornings, it was like 5am and dad would be standing there with fishing rods and it's like, hey, we're going to go fish, or at least I'm going to go fish before you go to school. You're welcome to join me. And we did every time. We always slayed them and we cooked them up that night all the time. So I don't do a whole lot of catch and release. We did a lot of catch, fillet and eat.
Speaker 5:But you know, I kept the fishing stories in mind and I also, you know, I tied it into a story once when I was jump off of and we were going through this guy's backyard. He's like, hey, you know, don't let him see you got a crouch down. He's got bear traps and chicken wire and shotgun, like if he sees you he'll call the police or go shoot you or something. Just, you know local folklore about some guy on this property who doesn't want kids cutting through, and so I kind of wrote the song about that. You know you're going to a hidden fishing hole in Jackson County, kentucky, which is where my whole family's from. I'm not from there originally, but my entire mom's family's, her family, they're from jackson county and stuff. I kind of just all those things in mind, thinking about my family, thinking about fishing and thinking about you know just crazy experiences that I had tied them all into this song well, I can't wait to play it right now.
Speaker 1:Hasn't been played on radio in Arizona yet. Not in Arizona.
Speaker 5:Nope, this will be a first time.
Speaker 1:Heck yeah. For the first time in Arizona on our small town radio show in Show Low Arizona on Q Country 92.5, we introduce Chase Saunders with his song Catch and Release. Let's go, baby, come on, let's go.
Speaker 5:Let's go.
Speaker 4:Brother, won't you come on down? Hey, won't you come on down to the water with me? Brother, don't you make a sound? Cause old John sitting on his back porch with a gun on his knee, and if we're caught out here rigging fishing line his back porch with a gun on his knee, and if we're caught out here rigging fishing line couple of rods and a jug of moonshine, john ain't the kind of man to take no excuse. You might ask him for a little mercy, beg him for a little mercy, beg him for a little grace, but there ain't any use in us trying to run away. Johnny boy, take his coffee, black Copenhagen and a bottle of Jack. Got an old brass harp and a key of G just waiting for trouble. Like you and me, we'll be right back.
Speaker 4:Why you ever moved out here? Cause you can't buy liquor and they don't sell beer. Where the hell did you get All that Jack Daniels from? We ain't got the sense To leave before we cause a scene. John ain't gonna let us go Without taking a piece. If we end up letting loose and he hears us through the trees, this ain't gonna be no catch and release One, two, three, four. A little late night. Moonshine A little late night. Moonshine A little late night drinking that. Moonshine A little late night. Moonshine A little late night. Moonshine A little late night drinkinghine A little late night. Moonshine A little late night Drinking that moonshine. We ended up at the end of John Tyler and we set ourselves up right by the water and the sun was going down, so we got that moonshine out Winding rods began to shake and move.
Speaker 4:We jumped right up and gave a howl at the moon. We'll be right back. We left a tackle box and two bait casters, but we couldn't hold our laugh Cause we still had a half a jug of that moonshine A little late night. Moonshine A little late night. Moonshine A little late night drink of that moonshine A little late night. Moonshine A little late night. Moonshine Late night drink of that moonshine A little late night. Moonshine A little late night. Moonshine Late night drinking that moonshine A little late night. Moonshine A little late night. Moonshine A little late night. Moonshine Catching me late.
Speaker 1:Heck yeah, that is Chase Saunders with his new song Catch and Release baby Woo. Chase, that was amazing. That came out last week. How can we all download it and help you climb the internet charts?
Speaker 5:Yeah, if you liked that Spotify, apple Music, pandora wherever you listen to music, you can find me. I'm on social media TikTok, instagram, Chase Saunders or Chase Saunders Music. My name is spelled C-H-A-C-E. It's Chase with two C's. Saunders is S-A-U-N-D-E-R-S. If you want to find me and if you like that song, please share with your friends. Stream it, just listen to it. Like it, add it to a playlist. Whatever you do with songs that you like, do the same for this one. If you didn't like it, send it to all your friends, tell them to come hate on me anything. At this point I'm desperate. I need all the publicity I can get q country nation.
Speaker 1:Let's help out our country climb. Star of the week chase saunders. Go ahead, give him a follow on all socials and download all his music and that way you also get notified when he has new music coming out. Anything new on the horizon that we should be on the lookout for.
Speaker 5:I'm coming out to Arizona in October. We are going to be on tour, so you know I don't have the exact dates off the top of my head, I just rushed here, but go to my pages on Instagram and Facebook. You can find the tour list. I'm going out with sons of habit and I will be in Arizona. We in Flagstaff will be in Phoenix. If you're around, come catch the show. It'll be mid October. Thanks y'all. I appreciate that. Please come out. It'd be awesome See some Arizona folk there.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Well, you have a music. We'd love to hear it first and uh, when you're in the area, let us know get back on the show so we can uh get out some people to show you some support from q country nation that'd be great, man, awesome.
Speaker 5:Thank you so much heck.
Speaker 1:Yes, this has been chase saunders, today's country climb star of the week. Thank you for having me on. Chris Bennett's Country Climb Star of the Week. Good morning, it's the Morning Brew with Chris. Who's this Good morning champion? Chris Bennett, heck, yes, it's Brian from Pinedale on this Friday morning. What's up?
Speaker 1:We got 23 days Heck, yes, 23 days until Chris Bennett Comedy presents stand-up comedy at the Pinedale Community Center on Saturday, September 20th, with the Best of Phoenix Comedy Showcase. These are some of my favorite stand-up comedians that perform all over the valley at all the major clubs. They perform across the country as well, and some of them have been up here already and they're fan favorites. Lamar Mitchell JR has been up here a couple times and everyone rants and raves about how amazing he is. He's actually been at Pinedale before. And we have Cricket Gill, who was at my last show, the Birthday Bash in July, and people loved her and wanted her back and she wanted to come back. So we're bringing her back. And then we have two new comedians. That's going to be the first time up here in the white mountains. We have Zach Allen and sorry, belly act, and it's going to be a fun night.
Speaker 1:Tickets are $25. Vip tickets are already sold out, so you don't have to worry about that. It is 21 and over. There is no alcohol sold on the premises, but they can BYOB, right, Correct. And we will have concessions and sodas and water. That's right. And the Alberto's Food Truck will be there serving up delicious Mexican food starting at 5. And this show is going to start a little early at 6.30 because I'm getting older and I need my beauty set. I'm getting older and I need my beauty sleep. Make sure you get your tickets at chrisbennettcomedycom, because we already have over 40 sold and only 90 left. So get your tickets at chrisbennettcomedycom or message me for reservations and you guys have a fun event going out there at the Community Center this weekend. What's going on?
Speaker 3:Okay, tomorrow the Navajo Taco Dinner and Bake Sale. It is at the Pinedale Community Center, same place. The comedy show is going to be at. It's Saturday, august 30th. Time is 11 to 2 o'clock until they run out of food. It's $15 for the taco dinner and a drink, $5 for the honey and butter and sweet taco and they're also going to have a bake sale with goodies for sale. All the proceeds go right directly into the Pinedale Heritage and Community Center.
Speaker 1:It is so cool what they do there. They have a lot of awesome events and it's such an awesome historical building, and so check that out. Good morning, it's the Morning Brew with Chris. Who's this? Hey, good morning my friend Heck. Yes, it's Virgil the Cowboy, everyone's favorite cowboy, from Eager Arizona. What are you up to this Labor Day weekend? I haven't heard from you forever. Give us a little update on Virgil.
Speaker 4:We're busy right now. Nice we went to the rodeo last night down in the White River.
Speaker 1:Nice, what rodeo Is that going on all weekend? Or was that just last night? A fair and rodeo until Sunday? Oh heck. Yes, nice, and you have a good time. You see any of your friends bunking some Broncos.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was a journey rodeo it was for kids.
Speaker 1:Oh, cool, okay, oh, that might have been one that I might have been, could have competed in, or no, mountain busting. Maybe that's the only thing I'm doing. I'm afraid of horses, because you heard what happened to our best friend, janine Ford, over at Magic 1017, and I Talk 1067. You hear what a horse did to her?
Speaker 4:Yes, she's a tough girl though.
Speaker 1:She is, and she's a cowgirl. You cowboys and cowgirls are just built differently. Huh Well, Virgil, I'm glad you had fun at the fair. What can I do you for today?
Speaker 3:The girls still miss their friends. I do too.
Speaker 1:Right she passed away a couple months ago. What do they want to hear, Virgil? Anything by Zac Brown Band?
Speaker 3:I don't know if that one was Never Let you Go, never Let.
Speaker 1:You Go. I don't think I have that one. How about we could do colder weather Highway 20, ride out in the middle loving you easy. Whatever it is, the cold one sounds good.
Speaker 4:All right.
Speaker 1:Colder weather. Zach Brown, you got it. I love you, virgil, say hi to the cowgirls and you and the cowgirls and cowboys have a great day. Be safe this weekend. They're right here listening to you and they said the same to you.
Speaker 2:Yee-ye.
