John Shearer & Jason MyersChase Rice and Florida Georgia Line currently have their first hit collaboration with “Drinkin’ Beer Talkin’ God Amen,” but the guys actually go way back.

A decade ago, Chase, Tyler Hubbard and Brian Kelley were roommates, sharing a place they called the Fun House in the Green Hills section of Nashville. 

“I learned from them,” Chase tells ABC Audio, “because they were in town two or three years before I ever moved here.”

“[They’d] wake up and try to write. We didn’t write songs together,” he goes on. “Russell Dickerson would come over and they’d write songs, and I’d just be sitting there in the kitchen or in my room hanging out because I hadn’t earned my way into the club yet of songwriting.”

“And that was my first experience learning what co-writes were,” Chase recalls. “And then days would go by that they didn’t have writes, and that’s when we’d just kind of creatively sit down and start working on one all three together.”

Of course, that turned out to be a fruitful collaboration, since Chase was one of the co-writers on FGL’s breakthrough, eleven-time RIAA-Platinum smash, “Cruise.” 

Chase says there’s no denying all three have changed since then.

“Tyler said it best,” Chase smiles. “He said, ‘Back then it’d be “Drinkin’ Beer Talking GIRLS Amen.”‘ And now it’s gone from that to ‘Drinkin’ Beer Talkin’ God Amen.'”

“It shows the progression of our lives,” he adds.  

Not long ago, the guys got together at an old tobacco barn on Chase’s Music City property to shoot the music video for their hit, which is nearing the top 30.

Look for Chase’s The Album Part III to be released later this year.

By Stephen Hubbard
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