With and/or with­out a revolv­ing cast of sup­port­ing char­ac­ters Chad Bault uses a bal­ance of easy-going humor and a sin­cere, plain­tive melan­choly to con­nect with his audi­ence. “I write songs for the under­dog.” he explains, “I write about the things that hurt. I write about the things that most pop song­writ­ers don’t want to talk about. I try to be as open and hon­est about my emo­tions as I can, and I think peo­ple con­nect with that. Some­times it just helps to know some­one else feels the same.”

Bault’s musi­cal roots are found in the seem­ingly incon­gru­ent gen­res of Garage and Folk. Grow­ing up in the farm­lands of East­ern Wash­ing­ton at the height of the Grunge explo­sion, Chad cut his teeth in garage band after garage band. He devel­oped the gritty side of his voice by cov­er­ing songs by Nir­vana and Alice In Chains. His first band, Big Brother, was one of the few East­ern Wash­ing­ton grunge bands to receive pos­i­tive press in the then pop­u­lar Seat­tle weekly The Rocket.

With the edu­ca­tion gained in those rural garages and attics Chad began per­form­ing solo; open­ing for artists like Pedro the Lion, Six­pence None the Richer and Damien Jurado. Draw­ing on influ­ences across the musi­cal spec­trum, his unique brand of indie infused acoustic music was begin­ning to take shape. “I was as much influ­enced by Kurt Cobain as I was Nick Drake. I’ve always tried to hear beyond the labels that we put on music, and find the artists behind them. I’ve been for­ever changed by artists like Jeff Buck­ley, Michael Hedges, Utah Phillips, Bono, Tracy Chap­man, Jeff Tweedy and Johnny Cash. It’s all in there, fil­ter­ing out through my per­spec­tive and abilities.”