Formed in 2013 in Castlewood, Virginia, 49 Winchester began when childhood friends Isaac Gibson (vocals/guitar), Bus Shelton (guitar), and Chase Chafin (bass) started playing music together. The band’s name originates from Gibson’s childhood home address on Winchester Street. They self-released three albums—49 Winchester (2014), The Wind (2018), and III (2020)—gradually building a dedicated fanbase through relentless touring and their distinctive blend of country, rock, and Appalachian soul. In 2022, they signed with New West Records and released their fourth album, ‘Fortune Favors the Bold,' marking a significant breakthrough and leading to sold-out tours in the U.S. and Europe, including arena shows opening for Luke Combs.
Building on this momentum, 49 Winchester released their fifth studio album, ‘Leavin’ This Holler' in August 2024. Produced in collaboration with Stewart Myers, the 10-track album features contributions from the Czech National Symphony Orchestra, singer-songwriter Maggie Antone, fiddler Philip Bowen, and guitarist Cole Chafin. Singles like ‘Yearnin’ For You' and ‘Hillbilly Happy' showcase the band’s evolution, blending heartfelt storytelling with their signature sound alongside hypntoic anthems like the track track and mesmeric album closer ‘Anchor.' The album has been met with critical acclaim, with No Depression noting its timely resonance and Glide Magazine highlighting the band’s unwavering momentum.
We caught up with Chase Chafin In London as the band prepared to play the C2C festival.
Thank you for speaking to me today, Chase, it's lovely to touch base with you! How's London?
It's great, we're glad to be back in the UK. We've got three shows around the C2C weekend, as you know, as we're just having a couple of days off before that. It's a little chilly out, I have to say!
You're developing a lovely habit of coming over to the UK now and we can expect you back again with Wyatt Flores in October too! What is it about being over here you like so much?
I think it's really exciting because it's still, somewhat, uncharted territory for us. We're showing that it's possible to build up a fan base over here that will sustain live shows. We don't have any massive hits, we're not a major band but we have built up a fan base over years here. The Luke Combs tour was a huge opportunity and we didn't want to take it for granted and we wanted to build upon that and we feel really good about it.
Does it surprise you that there is such an appetite over in Europe for a band playing Appalachian hillbilly Country Rock?
Yeah – it did at first. This is our third time over here now and it will be four in October – it's amazing and very exciting for us. We have friends in other bands that watching how we've done it and wondering whether there is anything they can learn about our success.
Bringing Wyatt Flores back with you in October is great as he is another artists steadily building a loyal fan base over here through hard graft and repeated visits.
That's going to be really cool. Wyatt is a friend and collaborator and just someone who we love – we also love his band and crew too – we hit it off with them from the beginning. We've watched Wyatt become a very successful artist in a very short time. He's killing it and we're thankful that he's going to be alongside us on that.
Talking of ‘killing it,' your last two albums have been so good. I didn't know whether you would be able to top ‘Fortune Favors the Bold' but you did! ‘Leavin' This Holler' is your fifth studio album – how do you think you've grown and evolved since the self-titled debut release in 2014?
You can look at that first album, it was Isaac, Bus and I – three guys that decided to start a band! That album was just really us three going into a studio and recording songs that Isaac had written. I was 18 years old at that point, right! (laughing) We made a CD and it was pretty much like a home studio vibe. They added in electric guitar and drums at the end so to go from that to doing what we did on ‘Leavin' This Holler' is amazing, that's the growth.
It's been great to have Stewart Myers onboard as our engineer and producer for the last two albums and he has helped us bring our ideas to life and been a big part of the band's evolving sound. We've always been open minded as far as what to do in the studio – we don't really think about genre or what might sound catchy on the radio – we just make music that we like, playing real instruments and building the songs together. We've got bigger resources at our disposal now, as well, which helps us to flesh out that sound even more.
Alongside the musical evolution you guys have put in some hard miles out on the road. A number of your songs, like ‘Russell County Line,' ‘Travelling Band' and ‘Yearnin' For You' are about that duality of life that you guys have to live within as touring musicians with families. What's the best and worst aspects of being a travelling band?
The best aspect is that you are paving your own way, you are doing something that you really believe in and you've got an opportunity to do something that a lot of people don't have. We've worked hard to get where we are and we all signed up for this, so the sacrifice there is always being away from home or always feeling like you are in transit. Even when you come home, you might have six days, which feels like a long time when you first get off that bus but then it flies by and you are back out again, always in motion.
We know what we signed up for – it's not an easy thing to do but it's the best job ever and I am very thankful for the fans that afford us this lifestyle and have carried us this far.
You've already touched upon the Luke Combs tour – do you think that was the nexus point or the springboard that elevated the band into this current phase?
Sure, yeah, especially in Europe. That was our first ever arena tour after we'd spent 8-9 years touring America in the van and then the bus so coming over to Europe to do an arena tour was a huge opportunity for us to grow our touring base over here.
We learned a lot about the different cultures over in Europe on that tour which was personally very satisfying too. It's amazing watching people in countries where English is not the first language singing our songs back to us!
When a band has a pivotal album like ‘Fortune Favors the Bold' there is always pressure on the follow up release. Did you perceive Isaac felt under pressure with the writing for ‘Leavin' This Holler' at all?
No, I don't think so. When you in the studio recording songs for long periods of time it's such a slow process that you don't really feel any pressure. New West have been such an ‘artist-friendly' label that meant they left us to our own devices – they believed in us and knew that we were gonna deliver an album that they were going to want to put out. It also helps that we are a band that doesn't need to be focused on big hits or commercial songs.
We didn't even say upfront ‘this is the kind of album that we wanna make,' we just cut the songs that we had then sat down with them and began to see what worked where and with what other songs. Isaac is a great songwriting and he's always surprising us with what he brings in and always pushing the envelope in terms of what the band can do.
My two favourite songs on the album are the title track and ‘Anchor.' With both of those songs being unusually long for Country Rock songs I guess you might be turning into the Prog-Rock behemoths of Appalachian music!
I love that! (laughing) Those two songs are probably our two favourite songs too. We added some additional elements into those songs, like the strings and the choir. ‘Anchor' is a really old song – Isaac probably wrote that song when we were somewhere in our early twenties and it's been on the shelf for a long time. We recorded a version of it years ago but never released it but now it felt like we were ready to record it with all its grandiose moments!
Given ‘Anchor' is at the end of the album and is one of the longest and slowest paced songs on there it's been one of the most popular, if not THE most popular track on the album. We didn't expect that!
You've only got 40 minutes on stage at the C2C festival so there probably isn't room or time to play a song like that this time around is there?
We would play it. We want to play the best set we think the C2C festival crowd will want to hear from us so that might mean leaving out popular songs in favour of ones we think will drive the flow and feel of a set where not everybody in the crowd will have seen us before or know who we are. It's a short set but then people can come back and see us again in October where we will have the time and space to expand a little and play all the songs people want to hear from us!
Back in 2023 you guys revamped two old songs – ‘Chemistry' and ‘Everlasting Lover' and I really liked what you did with them. Have you ever thought about doing that again with another couple of older songs now that you have more resources available to you?
Yeah, we have, we've talked about it a lot. We started this band in our teens with no resources behind us. We've gotten more confident with our instruments along the way too and added people into the mix like Justin on the drums and Tim on the keys, who got to play on the new versions of those two songs.
I would love to re-do some of the older songs from our back catalogue that I feel are pretty under rated.
Does Isaac write out on the road or is that lifestyle too distracting for creativity and have you caught wind of what your next project might be shaping up to sound like?
We're still touring ‘Leavin This Holler' for the rest of this year but we are definitely moving into a new creative phase in terms of new songs. We have debuted a couple of new songs out on tour in the states already. Isaac is always writing and bringing new ideas to the table – even when we had just finished the ‘… Holler' album songs like ‘Miles to Go' and other new ones were still being brought to the band!
Isaac has been doing some co-writing stuff and writing solo as well so we do now have enough songs to do another album but there's no rush right now, the next phase will be us deciding on which ones make the cut for the next project and recording them in the studio. A new era is definitely on the horizon!
Check out the tour dates for 49 Winchester's October UK tour with Wyatt Flores right here. Our review of their C2C festival set from London is available right here.
