Chris Housman has realized a dream that seemed impossible when he was a young man growing up on a cattle farm a 40-minute drive from Dodge City, Kansas (30 minutes if you know the back roads). Now based in Nashville, Chris has a thriving country music career that fully incorporates his identity as a proud member of the LGBTQ+ community. His debut album’s title track, “Blueneck,” hit No. 1 on the iTunes country chart, earned praise from Rolling Stone, Billboard, Good Morning America, and The Tennessean, and scored him a nomination for GLAAD’s Outstanding Breakthrough Music Artist Award. USA Today praised Chris’s strong vocals and “rich Southern charm,” calling him the “gayme-changer” country music needs right now. This summer, Chris makes his Grand Ole Opry debut, further expanding his growing, organic audience of more than 400k social media followers who recognize themselves in his clever, close-to-the-bone songwriting that captures our modern time in a way few current country artists dare.
Chris’s musical apprenticeship began very early as he cut his musical teeth playing fiddle and singing country classics with his family band at a Wild West show geared towards tourists visiting Dodge City, “The Cowboy Capital of the World.” Growing up in that environment was never an easy fit for Chris, and he knew from a young age he’d have to leave someday. Chris’s need to escape only grew more frantic as he realized he was attracted to those real-life cowboys he grew up with. Right after high school, Chris loaded up his car and moved to Nashville, desperate to leave Dodge City in his rearview forever.
Now, on his sophomore album, appropriately titled Dodge City, Chris recounts how he eventually found answers for all the thorny questions he was trying to avoid when he left that cow town. The opening title track captures the desperation of that initial escape. The rest of the album details the life Chris has lived in the years since as he’s learned to walk tall and stand in his truth. His philosophy of showing up as his full self no matter the cost is beautifully rendered in “Dirt on Me,” a song he admits was hard to sing in the studio without tearing up.
“‘Dirt on Me’ captures my whole life ethos in a song,” Chris says. “I just keep circling around to the mission of ‘How can I help people realize that, at the end of the day, we’re all just humans?’”
Chris’s desire to sing about the things we have in common as a response to increasing political division also inspired the deceptively uptempo anthem “Up and Down,” which hearkens back to country music’s history of calling out the super-rich taking advantage of the rest of us working hard just trying to make ends meet. A duet with fellow queer country artist Angie K on the bridge-building track “Crossroads” invites everyone to further consider our common humanity.
Chris says, “In my songs, I’m constantly attempting to break down what’s going on in the world in a way that people in my tiny hometown would understand. I don’t know how country music got so far away from speaking to the working man.”
Musically speaking, Dodge City is a mostly uptempo and decidedly country affair, as heard on the smoldering “Cowman,” the track guaranteed to turn the most heads and fill up the dance floor on a Saturday night. It’s Chris’s statement of naked desire for those Wrangler-wearing rodeo men who fueled his first adolescent crushes. He says with a knowing smile, “This one’s for the girls and the gays.”
Dodge City marks the first time Chris has played the fiddle on any of his recordings, a return to his first instrument he says “would make little Chris so proud.” “Straighten Out This Bender” and “Hidin’ Something” both feature Chris’s intricate fiddle solos, but his embrace of his musical past is most apparent on the closing song, “Tennessee Waltz.” Chris first played this classic country ballad from the late ‘40s as an instrumental fiddle solo in that Wild West show back in Dodge City, and it’s become a showstopper in his live act now that he’s performing it as a vocal number. As a final statement, “Tennessee Waltz” offers a sweet, full circle moment that finds Chris taking his rightful place as heir to country music’s rich history while breaking new ground to make sure everyone gets to hear their story told in this art form.
