Powerhouse trio Chapel Hart – comprised of sisters Danica and Devynn Hart and first cousin Trea Swindle – took the world by storm on America’s Got Talent last year with their show-stopping group golden buzzer performance of the Dolly Parton inspired track, “You Can Have Him Jolene.” Since America’s Got Talent, the ladies have quickly become a mainstay in the country music industry – they made their Grand Ole Opry debut in 2022, receiving four standing ovations, were recently named to the Opry’s NextStage Class of 2023, performed at the CMT Music Awards, ACM Country Kickoff and have been crisscrossing the USA on their 60+ date ‘Glory Days’ headlining tour.
Chapel Hart were due to play the Long Road festival over here in the UK last August but had to withdraw because of their stint on America’s Got Talent so we were excited to have them on the bill again for this year’s festival and, boy, did they impress. Winning hearts and minds wherever they played, it’s fair to say that Chapel Hart were this year’s ‘break-out’ artists of the weekend and we were thrilled to grab 10 minutes with them to talk all about it.
Lovely to talk to you today, we’ve been following your career for a few years now. How are you finding the UK and, more importantly, how’s the jet lag?
The jet-lag is kicking our butts but we are loving it! (laughing) We’re loving everything about the UK. Yesterday was the perfect example, we were in London and, man, we were tired. We jumped on the hop-on / hop-off bus to see the sights and we slept through half of it and so we went round and did it again! (laughing) We wanted to see Buckingham Palace but we missed it the first time because we were asleep.
You need to come back again and see everything at a slower pace.
We are planning on coming back and doing a full UK tour. We need a five week minimum tour, right? Nobody told us that the people here in the UK were so nice! Y’all are so nice and so good at keeping that a secret! (laughing)
Tell us English types what your hometown of Poplarville, Mississippi is like. It features in so many of your songs and the characters you sing about.
Ohhhhh. It’s so cute. There isn’t a stranger there at all, no one is a stranger at all, even if you have never been there. Everyone is always, ‘Hey y’all!’ And then there will be a 30 minute conversation about how they know you, whose cousin you are and where you went to school! (laughing) It doesn’t matter if you have eaten previously or are currently eating, you’ll get asked if you wanna eat and it will be rude to turn it down!
A trip to the grocery store in most places just takes a few minutes but in Poplarville it can take a long time, it’s a real journey because you’ll bump into a ton of people and everyone will want to talk to you. The whole town is like getting a hug from your grandma, it’s so wholesome and loving! (laughing) There ain’t no secrets in Poplarville, though and we’ve got a song called ‘Fam Damily’ that is all about that!
Am I right in thinking you began your careers busking on the streets of New Orleans back around 2013/2014? What was that like and if we could go back in time and speak to your 2014 selves, what advice you you give them?
You are absolutely correct. First of all, it was very unexpected in terms of maybe it was the kick in the butt we needed to knuckle down and try and do this music thing for real. The best advice we could give would be to say ‘be yourselves and do what you love to do’. When we started out in New Orleans people were, like, ‘what is it you want to do?’ and we always said that we wanted to sing Country music and they would reply, ‘But why? Nobody does that in New Orleans!’ (laughing)
We had a playlist of all our favourite songs, from Johnny Cash to Lil Jon and everything else in between but the minute we decided to start writing songs that meant something to us and that were more personal we started to attract way more fans and people who were interested in our music.
Have there been times when you think you haven’t been true to who you are then?
No, not really but it has been hard at times. We would definitely throw that on the list of things to tell ourselves 10 years ago. You need to trust that standing on your own two feet may not be the most popular or immediately successful thing you might do but it will pay off in the end! My daddy always used to say that ‘you better stand for something or you’ll fall for anything.’
We’ve always tried to do things our own way and it took a few years but it worked out in the end! (laughing)
So what did you learn about yourselves and the industry from your stint on America’s Got Talent last year?
We mainly learned that we might look like talent but we identified as crew! (laughing) They got the best food and the best snacks. We would be, like, starving and we would walk past a ‘crew’ tent and be like, ‘we got to get ourselves some of that!’ (laughing) Fruit, vegetables, meat – all that stuff and we would be, like, ‘can we have some of that?’ and they would say, ‘no, it’s just for crew,’ so we started to identify as crew! (laughing)
We did learn to believe in ourselves and we tell people at our shows now, that it was the part of the recipe we were missing as a band, up to that point. We knew we were good but we had shows where we would play a hundred cover songs and just a few Chapel Hart songs and people would ask us why we weren’t doing more of our songs but we just didn’t believe in ourselves enough until ‘You Can Have Him Jolene,’ and the show.
Did you ever get any feedback from Dolly about ‘You Can Have Him Jolene’?
She did share the audition of us singing the song on her social media and said that she loved what we did with it. She also said that that day was Carl, her husband’s birthday and so she said that she thought that she was going to keep him! (laughing)
We have so many fans in the States and they just become, like, our crazy aunts! All dressed up in ‘You Can Have Him Jolene’ T shirts but we have seen people over here at this festival in the same shirts, which is just crazy to us. The fact that we are getting that same kind of love in England blows our mind and we definitely have to come back.
Tell me about ‘Glory Days’ and how good an album it is.
On our album before ‘Glory Days’ we wanted to prove to the industry that we could write ‘radio’ songs and do these anthems. We started our Glory Days tour in January and we quickly realised we were in it for the wrong reasons. It’s the people who are buying front row tickets and VIP experiences who want to know more about us and hug us that we are doing this for. We quickly wanted to get an album out that told them more about us. You know what, if you wanted to go on a second date with Chapel Hart, that is where you need to start, with the ‘Glory Days’ album – and it sums up how we feel about life right now.
‘Glory Days’ will tell you more about us and who we are. It will tell you about where we live and what we love and it will show you where we grew up and tell you all about the people who made us who we are. If ‘The Girls Are Back in Town’ is the first date with Chapel Hart then ‘Glory Days’ is you getting a chance to come home and meet our family. We have songs like ‘Home is Where the Hart Is’ that is about our friends like Lauren and Lexi and Jessica.
We told people when we made our first record that we wanted to capture that big Nashville sound and our producer said that he hated that sound! (laughing) And then we made the record anyway! (laughing) Somebody once told us that they thought our first record was a little too Country for Country radio but we wanted to make it anyway. I think who Chapel Hart is shows up more on ‘Glory Days’ than on any album we’ve done so far.
