Three years ago on “American Idol,” Chayce Beckham performed his autobiographical tune “23″ he had written a year earlier after a drunken driving incident.
Viewers and the judges loved it. But Beckham didn’t immediately release an album. “I was very green at the time,” he said in a recent interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Instead, he worked on his stage performance, touring all over the country and refining his songwriting chops. His record label finally released “23″ as a country single in early 2023. It took awhile for radio stations to give it spins but when listeners heard the song, they liked it. A whopping 15 months later, “23″ hit the top of the Billboard country airplay chart the same week his first studio album “Bad For Me” came out.
“It was a slow burn,” Beckham said. “God taught me patience.”
He is one of only a handful of “Idol” alums to hit that pinnacle, including Carrie Underwood (who will be an “Idol” judge in 2025), Scotty McCreery, Lauren Alaina and Gabby Barrett.
Now the 28-year-old California native is on the road with headliner Luke Bryan on a stadium tour that stops at Truist Park on Saturday, Aug. 17. Tickets are still available via Ticketmaster.com starting at $39.75. Beckham will hit the stage at 6 p.m.
Bryan of course, has been an “Idol” judge since 2018 on ABC and saw Beckham’s promise early on.
After the show, Beckham moved to Nashville, Tennessee, and met with Bryan’s manager Kerri Edwards. He then spent a couple of days at Bryan’s home fishing. “We hung out and got to know each other,” Beckham said. “He told me, ‘Whenever you want to come fishing, here’s the code to my place.’ He invited me to Super Bowl parties. He treated me like family.”
Edwards also liked Beckham and signed him on as a client to help nurture his career.
“My biggest fear was disappearing after ‘American Idol’,” he said.
Last year, he opened 30 dates with Bryan and has done several more this year.
Beckham had to accept early on that he couldn’t just play all original music on stage when the audience wasn’t familiar with songs that had yet to land on Spotify, YouTube or radio. At first, he played plenty of familiar covers, then he’d salt in his own songs.
And he said he had to get comfortable focusing on country music after playing everything from ska and reggae to rock when he was younger.
“I grew up on country but spent a lot of time running away from it,” Beckham said. “It was kind of weird. I got older and learned how much country music meant to me.”
His current set list includes covers of acts he loves including Brooks & Dunn, Garth Brooks, Toby Keith and Tyler Childers. But he gets a kick hearing fans sing along to his newer songs such as “Drink You Off My Mind” and “Little Less Lonely.”
“I’m getting more confident with myself on stage,” Beckham said. “I still can’t believe sometimes that people want to hear me sing.”
IF YOU GO
Luke Bryan with Bailey Zimmerman, Kameron Marlowe, and Chayce Beckham
6 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 17. Truist Park, 755 Battery Ave. SE, Atlanta, ticketmaster.com.
