The C2C Sit Down with 49 Winchester
Since their first British appearance at C2C: Country to Country in 2023, 49 Winchester have continued to maintain their reputation as one of the best live bands in the business and also made the UK and Europe particularly important markets to the guys from Castlewood, Virginia. Headline shows of their own along with opening for Luke Combs in late 2023 have continued to grow their fan base and they now return to play the festival where it all started over here but a graduation onto the main stage in London along with the opportunity to play the festival in Berlin, Rotterdam, Belfast and Glasgow.
With a catalogue spanning over a decade of releases across five studio albums, they do not just have a big live sound but a lot of music for their fans to draw from. The most recent of these five records was “Leavin’ This Holler” which was released in August last year, so the performances at this year’s festival would be the first opportunity for European fans to hear songs from this project performed live.
Between the events in Berlin and London, we caught up with one of the bands founding members, Chase Chafin to talk about the band’s growth in Europe which led to the announcement of their biggest headline tour to date right across the month of October.
Hey Chase, it’s great to see you man and awesome to have you guys back in Europe. We caught you playing in Berlin which was wild but you guys did the Netherlands too and played Rotterdam, I haven’t made it there yet so how is the space and the Dutch audience in comparison to how they are here or in Germany?
“It's really good, you know. It felt like a it was a bigger room, but they had it seated, so it was a little bit different with the seats but it was really nice. The stage and everything was great for both shows, in Berlin, I loved that main stage with the lights and everything but it felt really solid at both shows honestly.”
The festival definitely felt a lot busier in Berlin this year which is really good to see it keep growing there. Then you guys are seeing your own growth at the festival here and in Europe because you came over for it in 2023 but this time you are back to play the big room.
“Yeah, absolutely, just two years ago we did the small stages with the bar upstairs for the after party thing, we did the tent outside and then we did get to through the Indigo at The O2, which was really nice a couple years ago. I mean, to go from that to the main stages at the arenas in Belfast, Glasgow and London is very exciting.”
With a catalogue spanning over a decade of releases across five studio albums, they do not just have a big live sound but a lot of music for their fans to draw from. The most recent of these five records was “Leavin’ This Holler” which was released in August last year, so the performances at this year’s festival would be the first opportunity for European fans to hear songs from this project performed live.
Between the events in Berlin and London, we caught up with one of the bands founding members, Chase Chafin to talk about the band’s growth in Europe which led to the announcement of their biggest headline tour to date right across the month of October.
Hey Chase, it’s great to see you man and awesome to have you guys back in Europe. We caught you playing in Berlin which was wild but you guys did the Netherlands too and played Rotterdam, I haven’t made it there yet so how is the space and the Dutch audience in comparison to how they are here or in Germany?
“It's really good, you know. It felt like a it was a bigger room, but they had it seated, so it was a little bit different with the seats but it was really nice. The stage and everything was great for both shows, in Berlin, I loved that main stage with the lights and everything but it felt really solid at both shows honestly.”
The festival definitely felt a lot busier in Berlin this year which is really good to see it keep growing there. Then you guys are seeing your own growth at the festival here and in Europe because you came over for it in 2023 but this time you are back to play the big room.
“Yeah, absolutely, just two years ago we did the small stages with the bar upstairs for the after party thing, we did the tent outside and then we did get to through the Indigo at The O2, which was really nice a couple years ago. I mean, to go from that to the main stages at the arenas in Belfast, Glasgow and London is very exciting.”
In terms of planning for the festivals, your sets in Berlin and Rotterdam were longer sets than the three UK shows at C2C so did you work on two different sets before you came over or are you guys just vibes on the day where it’s we've got 50 minutes today, what shall we play?
“We have like our go-to then we have a lot of songs that go straight into the next song and things we can just do without talking about it as a band. Yeah, we have our blueprint for the forty minute set, but from not night to night, we'll switch out a song or two sometimes. Overall, we have the groundwork laid, but then when we get to a city sometimes, we get to our sound check and we're like it feels nice in this room so we'll try that tonight. It just slowly changes over time and from night to night, then we'll be like, all right, let's go back to what we did a week ago. We’re not strictly by a set for like the whole year or anything, like we have the five albums and we just kind of switch it up quite a bit. It's hard to get everyone's favourite song in, especially a forty minute set, so it's hard to pick what not to play because there's so many people that wanna hear such particular songs from, you know, our second or third album so we just mix it up.”
The main arena in London is a big room, but it’s not a new one for you guys as you were in there with Luke Combs and your live show is so good at whatever venue that you are playing. Where you guys tour a lot and the live show is integral to what you guys are as a band, does that come into the creative process for making a record where it needs to fit the live shows as much as be a fit for the album itself?
“No, Isaac always writes the music, you know the chords and the lyrics or whatever but some of them come together more in the venues because we don't get a lot of time to rehearse, we're always on the road. A lot of times, especially our headline shows, we'll just use the morning to work on new music, record the demos and stuff like that then kind of be, all right, we have a song there. Isaac always brings the lyrics, the chords and like the idea for the song to us, then there's some that kind of start acoustic in the studio and then by the time it gets to six months later after we have recorded it and we started playing it live, it's really changed and beefed up. The live show is always gonna be ever evolving, where the album is so set in stone, like once we get the song recorded, it's usually a new song but you know with our live show we're always evolving. Usually, it ends up getting bigger and louder as we go into these five thousand or at The 02 like twenty thousand cap venues, you know, we really want to bring it, kind of turn it up to ten and give the people a show that's worthy of a room that size.”
With being out on the road so much, does it become a point where it’s been a while since you put a project out and Isaac has a bunch of new songs, that you have to specifically block out a couple of weeks a long way in advance to get into the studio or are you guys able to do it organically and head to the studio on an off day?
“At this point it is where we do have to basically plan it out in months in advance you know. Isaac's always writing whether it be on his own or he does his co-writes with some other artists like he's been doing recently, so we have a lot of songs to pull from for the next album and yeah, we're just gonna find some time this year. We have a few different windows which we're looking at between tours where we're gonna be in the studio this year and it's really exciting. I'm really excited about some of the new songs that we're gonna record and it's just an exciting time for the band. Definitely these days though, we have to map it out at least weeks if not months in advance, because we’re gone so much, we have families and we're all a little spread out.”
“We have like our go-to then we have a lot of songs that go straight into the next song and things we can just do without talking about it as a band. Yeah, we have our blueprint for the forty minute set, but from not night to night, we'll switch out a song or two sometimes. Overall, we have the groundwork laid, but then when we get to a city sometimes, we get to our sound check and we're like it feels nice in this room so we'll try that tonight. It just slowly changes over time and from night to night, then we'll be like, all right, let's go back to what we did a week ago. We’re not strictly by a set for like the whole year or anything, like we have the five albums and we just kind of switch it up quite a bit. It's hard to get everyone's favourite song in, especially a forty minute set, so it's hard to pick what not to play because there's so many people that wanna hear such particular songs from, you know, our second or third album so we just mix it up.”
The main arena in London is a big room, but it’s not a new one for you guys as you were in there with Luke Combs and your live show is so good at whatever venue that you are playing. Where you guys tour a lot and the live show is integral to what you guys are as a band, does that come into the creative process for making a record where it needs to fit the live shows as much as be a fit for the album itself?
“No, Isaac always writes the music, you know the chords and the lyrics or whatever but some of them come together more in the venues because we don't get a lot of time to rehearse, we're always on the road. A lot of times, especially our headline shows, we'll just use the morning to work on new music, record the demos and stuff like that then kind of be, all right, we have a song there. Isaac always brings the lyrics, the chords and like the idea for the song to us, then there's some that kind of start acoustic in the studio and then by the time it gets to six months later after we have recorded it and we started playing it live, it's really changed and beefed up. The live show is always gonna be ever evolving, where the album is so set in stone, like once we get the song recorded, it's usually a new song but you know with our live show we're always evolving. Usually, it ends up getting bigger and louder as we go into these five thousand or at The 02 like twenty thousand cap venues, you know, we really want to bring it, kind of turn it up to ten and give the people a show that's worthy of a room that size.”
With being out on the road so much, does it become a point where it’s been a while since you put a project out and Isaac has a bunch of new songs, that you have to specifically block out a couple of weeks a long way in advance to get into the studio or are you guys able to do it organically and head to the studio on an off day?
“At this point it is where we do have to basically plan it out in months in advance you know. Isaac's always writing whether it be on his own or he does his co-writes with some other artists like he's been doing recently, so we have a lot of songs to pull from for the next album and yeah, we're just gonna find some time this year. We have a few different windows which we're looking at between tours where we're gonna be in the studio this year and it's really exciting. I'm really excited about some of the new songs that we're gonna record and it's just an exciting time for the band. Definitely these days though, we have to map it out at least weeks if not months in advance, because we’re gone so much, we have families and we're all a little spread out.”
The thing with having so many songs is partly why “Miles To Go” wasn’t on the initial version of the album and you guys wanted the project to fit on vinyl. By the way, it’s great what’s happening with the label going back and putting the older albums out on an actual record too because it’s always the best way to listen to music. That song specifically though found it’s way onto the season finale of Yellowstone and sync is kind of like one of the industry’s greatest mysteries but from your standpoint how do songs end up on Yellowstone? Do they reach out to certain artists because they know what they are looking for and ask if you have something or are you almost trying to shop songs to them?
“It's more so, I guess that they're looking for certain types of songs and it's you know, behind the scenes type thing with publishing or whoever. We sent them all the songs from the new album plus the bonus tracks and then then they go we want the bonus track which had only been released on the UK exclusive through Rough Trade where they had the plastic Plexi disk but that was only about five hundred copies. We kept saying we wanna put out this song, but maybe we should do it in the winter and then, you know, it's gonna be on Yellowstone so literally within two weeks, I think it was the day before it was on Yellowstone that we released it. We definitely rushed to put it out because we were like, oh it’s gonna be on Yellowstone in two weeks, we’ve got to put this song out, but we wanted to anyway so it was just really good timing and we were excited to pair that up nicely. It was right as we were finishing the year of touring, going into the winter months, so it was something nice to give the fans at the end of the season.”
Then in terms of things over here, it’s not just the festival but we’ve got a big old tour that you’ve announced for later in the year where now that you have been over a couple of times you are heading out to even more places.
“Yeah, I mean, I'm happy to be testing the waters on that, you know, some of those shows we did with Luke (Combs), the promoters or the people at the venues were saying that these were some of the biggest country concerts that have happened in places like Denmark, the Netherlands and stuff like that where people were saying this is like the biggest country concert note they've ever known to be here. It's really cool and you know, it's still a risk to try to then go to our own headline tour, especially ones these they're these long, but we really believe in it and they haven't let us down yet. We did our small tour of like the bars and small clubs in the spring, then now we going much higher level venues with it and we’re bringing Wyatt (Flores), so I feel really strong about it and we're very excited. I think it's set up really nicely to be a success and just really excited to get to revisit some of those cities that we didn't get to do this time for C2C like Manchester, Birmingham, Amsterdam, Hamburg and Copenhagen so, it’s pretty much the whole month of October through most of Europe and the UK.”
Lastly, coming back to C2C, there's somebody that's going to be coming here for the first time who I'm incredibly excited about. I’m a huge fan of Maggie Antone and she featured on the title track of the most recent record, how did she come about being kind of a collaborator on that song when you were recording it?
“We actually were working on that and we were thinking how we would love to have someone do like the higher harmony vocal on that song and we were just fans of Maggie as we had just discovered her around the same time. She's just really sweet, a friend and a fellow musician that we believe in. Like you said, she's coming over for the first time so I’m really excited for her, I feel like the crowds will be great and she will get to see how much people love country music over here.”
“It's more so, I guess that they're looking for certain types of songs and it's you know, behind the scenes type thing with publishing or whoever. We sent them all the songs from the new album plus the bonus tracks and then then they go we want the bonus track which had only been released on the UK exclusive through Rough Trade where they had the plastic Plexi disk but that was only about five hundred copies. We kept saying we wanna put out this song, but maybe we should do it in the winter and then, you know, it's gonna be on Yellowstone so literally within two weeks, I think it was the day before it was on Yellowstone that we released it. We definitely rushed to put it out because we were like, oh it’s gonna be on Yellowstone in two weeks, we’ve got to put this song out, but we wanted to anyway so it was just really good timing and we were excited to pair that up nicely. It was right as we were finishing the year of touring, going into the winter months, so it was something nice to give the fans at the end of the season.”
Then in terms of things over here, it’s not just the festival but we’ve got a big old tour that you’ve announced for later in the year where now that you have been over a couple of times you are heading out to even more places.
“Yeah, I mean, I'm happy to be testing the waters on that, you know, some of those shows we did with Luke (Combs), the promoters or the people at the venues were saying that these were some of the biggest country concerts that have happened in places like Denmark, the Netherlands and stuff like that where people were saying this is like the biggest country concert note they've ever known to be here. It's really cool and you know, it's still a risk to try to then go to our own headline tour, especially ones these they're these long, but we really believe in it and they haven't let us down yet. We did our small tour of like the bars and small clubs in the spring, then now we going much higher level venues with it and we’re bringing Wyatt (Flores), so I feel really strong about it and we're very excited. I think it's set up really nicely to be a success and just really excited to get to revisit some of those cities that we didn't get to do this time for C2C like Manchester, Birmingham, Amsterdam, Hamburg and Copenhagen so, it’s pretty much the whole month of October through most of Europe and the UK.”
Lastly, coming back to C2C, there's somebody that's going to be coming here for the first time who I'm incredibly excited about. I’m a huge fan of Maggie Antone and she featured on the title track of the most recent record, how did she come about being kind of a collaborator on that song when you were recording it?
“We actually were working on that and we were thinking how we would love to have someone do like the higher harmony vocal on that song and we were just fans of Maggie as we had just discovered her around the same time. She's just really sweet, a friend and a fellow musician that we believe in. Like you said, she's coming over for the first time so I’m really excited for her, I feel like the crowds will be great and she will get to see how much people love country music over here.”
It’s great that you guys are back and really exciting to hear about the tour in October, I really do believe that you are one of the live bands that you will see anywhere where if people come into your room and do not know any of your music, they will walk away a fan because you absolutely killed it in Berlin
“We really appreciate that and we believe in it a lot, we’re really proud of our music, we’re proud of our fan base, we care about it a lot so that means a lot to us.”
Welcome To The Holler 2025 UK/EU Tour Dates:
4th October - Dublin, Ireland - 3Olympia Theatre
5th October - Belfast, Northern Ireland - Telegraph Building
7th October - Glasgow, Scotland - O2 Academy
8th October - Manchester, England - Academy 1
10th October - Leeds, England - Stylus
11th October - Birmingham, England - O2 Institute
14th October - London, England - Roundhouse
16th October - Bristol, England - O2 Academy
18th October - Ghent, Belgium - Club Wintercircus
20th October - Amsterdam, Netherlands - Paradiso
21st October - Groningen, Netherlands - De Oosterpoort
22nd October - Cologne, Germany - Carlswerk Victoria
24th October - Berlin, Germany - Astra
25th October - Hamburg, Germany - Docks
26th October - Copenhagen, Denmark - Vega Main Hall
28th October - Stockholm, Sweden - Filadelfia
29th October - Oslo, Norway - Rockefeller
“Miles To Go” is the latest release from 49 Winchester which is out now and available via New West Records HERE. The “Welcome To The Holler” tour featuring special guest Wyatt Flores heads to Europe in October with all dates shown above and ticket information is available on their WEBSITE whilst you can keep up to date with all that the guys are up to on TIKTOK X INSTAGRAM & FACEBOOK.
C2C: Country to Country will return to Berlin in 2026 across the weekend of March 6th to 8th where you will be able to find more details on their WEBSITE and keep in the loop regarding lineups and ticket information on INSTAGRAM & FACEBOOK. Then we will see you again in London (or maybe even Belfast/Glasgow) a week later across March 13th to 15th with early bird tickets on sale now where you can find more details on the WEBSITE and socials (FACEBOOK X and INSTAGRAM)
“We really appreciate that and we believe in it a lot, we’re really proud of our music, we’re proud of our fan base, we care about it a lot so that means a lot to us.”
Welcome To The Holler 2025 UK/EU Tour Dates:
4th October - Dublin, Ireland - 3Olympia Theatre
5th October - Belfast, Northern Ireland - Telegraph Building
7th October - Glasgow, Scotland - O2 Academy
8th October - Manchester, England - Academy 1
10th October - Leeds, England - Stylus
11th October - Birmingham, England - O2 Institute
14th October - London, England - Roundhouse
16th October - Bristol, England - O2 Academy
18th October - Ghent, Belgium - Club Wintercircus
20th October - Amsterdam, Netherlands - Paradiso
21st October - Groningen, Netherlands - De Oosterpoort
22nd October - Cologne, Germany - Carlswerk Victoria
24th October - Berlin, Germany - Astra
25th October - Hamburg, Germany - Docks
26th October - Copenhagen, Denmark - Vega Main Hall
28th October - Stockholm, Sweden - Filadelfia
29th October - Oslo, Norway - Rockefeller
“Miles To Go” is the latest release from 49 Winchester which is out now and available via New West Records HERE. The “Welcome To The Holler” tour featuring special guest Wyatt Flores heads to Europe in October with all dates shown above and ticket information is available on their WEBSITE whilst you can keep up to date with all that the guys are up to on TIKTOK X INSTAGRAM & FACEBOOK.
C2C: Country to Country will return to Berlin in 2026 across the weekend of March 6th to 8th where you will be able to find more details on their WEBSITE and keep in the loop regarding lineups and ticket information on INSTAGRAM & FACEBOOK. Then we will see you again in London (or maybe even Belfast/Glasgow) a week later across March 13th to 15th with early bird tickets on sale now where you can find more details on the WEBSITE and socials (FACEBOOK X and INSTAGRAM)
