We recently connected with Kyle Chatham & The Road Shots and have shared our conversation below.

Kyle Chatham & The, appreciate you joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

We are currently working out all of the details for our 1st full length album entitled “Trying 2 Feel Alive”.

This will be a follow up to our 1st ever live EP “Trying To Feel Alive” released on New Year’s Eve 2022. This album will also be recorded live, but this time from Fraco’s Bar & Music in Littleton, Colorado on 12/20/23. Our friend Tree from Open Stage Denver will be helping us out with the recording process. He will be taking the audio from the live show and mixing and mastering it for the album. Tree has worked with our Drummer, Shane “Smittyyy” Smith on previous projects for his band Altitude Travelers / Riot Pilots. Look for our debut live album “Trying 2 Feel Alive” sometime around Spring / Summer 2024.

We are also very excited to be working with Shootin’ Dice Studios to be filming this entire show as well! The whole performance will be professionally filmed and released on Youtube. Expect that sometime in early 2024.

We have been working very hard on this specific show, and the projects that come from it! We hope 2024 is a big year for us.

Kyle Chatham & The, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Kyle Chatham & The Road Shots is a country / bluegrass band from Colorado.

Our drummer Shane “Smittyyy” Smith was fresh off of the breakup from local up and coming band Altitude Travelers / Riot Pilots. When the band had local bar gigs, they would ask Kyle Chatham to open up the night. Once Riot Pilots broke up, the 2 decided it was time to start something new.

Kyle Chatham & The Road Shots was originally an acoustic duo consisting of Kyle Chatham on guitar and vocals and Smittyyy on drums / percussion. Smittyyy played mostly djembe and cajon at this time. Then, ex Riot Pilots bassist Tim Cleary joined the group. From here, we decided it was better to be a full band where Smittyyy played a drum kit and we even started mixing electric guitar and upright bass into things. For a while, Paul Chase O’Dell played lead guitar, but he moved away due to his obligations with the military. Nowadays, Kyle Chatham & The Road Shots is a 3-piece consisting of Kyle, Smittyyy, and Tim.

I would say the thing that we are most proud of is the artists that we have worked with. We have played shows with Saving Abel, Struggle Jennings, Creed Fisher, Demun Jones, The Last Revel, MoonShine Bandits, and all sorts of awesome local bands!

I think the thing that we would want people to know most about us is that we are a fun band. We want you to come see us perform and have a good time with us! We love getting to hang out with our fans after the show.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

For this band, pivoting has actually been rather common. Sadly, we are all getting a little older and that has provided a set of challenges that we never quite expected. Our drummer had a very serious and life-threatening brain / spine surgery in early 2022. That really messed everything up. We had to cancel shows and weren’t even sure if we would get the chance to keep going for a minute.

Tim has had his own health problems, and we will be taking the first half of 2024 slow for now so that he can take care of himself. We do have 1 show booked at Sunshine Studios Live opening up for Sam Grow, and as we already mentioned we have an album and video coming out in 2024 as well. However, you might not hear much from us after that until later in 2024.

Life just seems to happen more when you get older, and it has been hard and unexpected.

Also, don’t even get us started on covid. We had to pivot big time and cancel all kinds of shows. We were booked to play at Hard Rock Cafe in Denver and to open up for T.O.N.E-z at The Roxy. Both were cancelled and we never had the chance to reschedule. Now, The Hard Rock isn’t even open anymore.

We had to pivot during covid, and we started doing “quaranstreams”. Kyle would play songs from home on Facebook and people would watch. It worked, but of course we missed being out in front of a crowd.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

I think like any band, we would love to become rich and famous. We would love to tour the world playing music at all kinds of different places. We would love to play Red Rocks…. I think any musician in Colorado has that dream.

Our dream is perhaps a little different. Of course, we would love for the things mentioned above to happen for us. However, at this point in our lives we are just happy to be able to do this at all. We get to play music in front of people and actually have a crowd. We get to work with some “big” names in music. We get to do a lot of the things that many people only dream of. We always wish we could be bigger, but we are content with where we are too.

The biggest goal or mission we have is to really just have fun with our friends. We played at our drummers wedding in Morrison, Colorado. We’ve done little barn raiser type gigs. We have played small mountain festivals…. At this point in our lives our biggest goal is to have fun and make memories with our friends and family while playing music….. What else could anyone really ask for?

Contact Info:

• Website: https://kylechathamtheroadshots.bandcamp.com/album/trying-to-feel-alive-ep
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kylechathamandtheroadshots/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KyleChathamAndTheRoadShots
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@kylechathamtheroadshotstv6451

Image Credits
R Schneider Fractal Noise Media