Fifteen years into one of country music’s most adventurous careers, Chase Rice is still finding new mountains to climb, and with his brand-new album ELDORA, he might’ve just reached his creative peak.
Released independently on his own terms, ELDORA is the sound of an artist who’s learned to let go. Written in a Colorado cabin after an epic night at Red Rocks, the project finds Rice tapping into the rugged, unfiltered heart of the American West — and himself.
“It’s the best I got right now,” Rice tells Celeb Secrets host Juliet Schroder in an exclusive interview earlier this year. “I had to completely let go. Not think about what people are gonna like, not overthink it. Just surrender to the process and put it out there.”
That mindset — raw, stripped down, and real — defines ELDORA. Recorded mostly at home in Nashville with close collaborator Oscar Charles and longtime creative partner Wyatt McCubbin, the 12-track record captures Rice’s voice and acoustic guitar in their purest form. No edits. No layers. Just one take, one truth.
“It’s a very human record to make,” he says. “If there were mistakes but it was good enough, it was good enough.”
While most artists would celebrate a milestone show at Red Rocks with champagne and fanfare, Rice took a different route. He packed up his truck — camper shell and all — and hit the road through Montana, Oregon, and Canada, living minimally and sleeping by rivers.
“I’ve been living in my truck,” he laughs. “It’s that minimalist mindset. Finding showers, finding rivers to shower in… it’s changed the game. It’s made it harder, but a lot more rewarding.”
That off-the-grid freedom bled directly into ELDORA, written over just three days in a tiny A-frame cabin outside Rollinsville, Colorado. One of the first songs born from the trip was the haunting title track “Eldora,” named after a hidden mountain town the trio kept passing on their drive.
“We weren’t even trying to write a record,” Rice recalls. “We passed a place called the Eldora Lodge, and I said, ‘I don’t know what Eldora is, but we’re gonna write about it.’ We ended up writing nine songs in three days, and we didn’t change the order. The tracklist is literally the order they were written.”
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If ELDORA as an album is a reflection of Rice’s independence and emotional release, the title track is its soul; a cinematic story about love, loss, and redemption set against the quiet majesty of the Rockies.
“Eldora” tells the tale of a young Colorado couple haunted by their past, trying to rebuild what was lost under the weight of regret. It’s intimate, shadowy, and deeply human — much like Rice himself these days. The song’s atmosphere feels as expansive as the mountain air it was written in, yet its emotional tension stays right at heart level.
“Eldora is actually about a couple that have an abortion,” Rice shares candidly. “There’s only one line that gives that away — ‘We were just two kids with too much life to live.’ That’s a little hint that the one thing they couldn’t get over was that moment. But they still love each other. It’s about finding a way to move forward despite the weight of the past.”
For Rice, the decision to write something so raw was a turning point. Rather than sanding down the story to make it more palatable, he leaned into the discomfort, trusting that honesty would resonate louder than perfection.
“It’s one of the hardest songs I’ve ever written,” he admits. “It’s heavy, but that’s real life. I wanted to write something that wasn’t afraid to say the quiet part out loud.”
Musically, “Eldora” embodies the record’s minimalist spirit — sparse acoustic picking, a few ghostly harmonies, and Rice’s weathered voice breaking in all the right places. There’s no production trickery, just emotion in its purest form. You can practically hear the cabin walls and feel the high-altitude stillness that surrounded him while writing it.
That unvarnished quality gives the song (and the album) its power. “Eldora” doesn’t chase the formulaic country radio single. It is the story. A map of healing and acceptance, written by someone who’s done the hard work of growing up.
“We didn’t overthink a thing,” Rice says. “We just wrote what felt true and let it breathe. ‘Eldora’ set the tone for everything that came after.”
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For Chase Rice, ELDORA isn’t just an album title or a town name — it’s a philosophy. A way of living that mirrors the quiet courage it takes to move on from the past, strip life down to the essentials, and create something real.
“If I had to define Eldora as a mindset,” he says, “it’s about letting go. That’s the theme of this whole record. Just surrendering to the process, to where you are, to not worrying if people will like it or not. It’s about completely letting go — that’s Eldora.”
That spiritual simplicity seeps into every song, from the gentle reflection of “Sunsettin’” to the freedom-fueled grit of “Two Tone Trippin’.” For Rice, it’s less about chasing a hit and more about chasing truth — something he admits took years of learning and unlearning.
“It’s changed the way I make music, but also the way I live,” he explains. “I don’t need to control everything. I don’t need to run the show. I just need to show up, tell my story, and trust that it’s enough.”
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Leaving his major label last year opened a new creative lane for Rice — one not dictated by radio singles or release schedules.
“With labels, everything’s on a timeline. Now, if I want to drop a song tomorrow, I can,” he says. “My birthday’s September 19th, so that’s when ELDORA drops. Why? Because I wanted it to.”
That independence doesn’t just fuel the rollout; it fuels the art. Free from commercial expectations, Rice chased storytelling over charts, trading bro-country hooks for the grit of real-life moments.
“I’m not chasing hits anymore,” he admits. “Hopefully one of these pops, but even if it doesn’t — this is the best music I’ve ever made.”
The record opens with “Cowboy Goodbye,” a campfire farewell to his former self, before rolling into the cinematic “Eldora.” Elsewhere, “Two Tone Trippin’” captures the endless blacktop feeling of life on the move.
“I wrote ‘Two Tone Trippin’’ before I lived it,” he says. “Now I’m literally driving that two-tone truck with my dog Jack, sleeping by rivers, on top of mountains — and it’s exactly the life that song describes.”
Then there’s ELDORA’s emotional centerpiece, “Circa 1943,” a WWII-era love story inspired by Rice’s grandparents’ names and the strength of a generation that “built what we have today.”
Other standouts include “Mr. Coors,” a soulful tribute to the American dream, and “Country & Western” with Madeline Edwards, a smoky, blues-infused duet that has been called “a sexy, Texas-meets-tall-pines anthem.”
While ELDORA may sound like a departure from Rice’s early “party song” days, he insists it’s just an evolution of the same storyteller — only older, wiser, and unafraid to dig deeper.
“Those songs were real, because that’s what I was living,” he says. “Now I’m 39, and it’s me and my dog in a truck. I’m not trying to write another song about driving a girl around. That’s not where I’m at anymore.”
That honesty has struck a chord with fans who’ve followed Rice since “Eyes On You” and “Drinkin’ Beer. Talkin’ God. Amen.,” and he hopes it’ll open the door for new listeners looking for something real in modern country.
“This is a record nobody else could’ve made,” he says proudly. “It’s the realist version of me.”
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Between tour dates and truck miles, Rice is already dreaming up his next chapter — an eastern-themed follow-up, written in the Appalachian mountains that raised him. But for now, his focus is celebrating ELDORA’s release his way: on the road, rod in hand.
“I’m spending my birthday out in Missoula,” he says with a grin. “Fishing with my mom, floating the river, drinking beer with my buddies — that’s all I need.”
And as he toasts to a new era, Rice’s next big goal?
“I wanna win a Grammy,” he says. “But if it comes, it comes. I’ve learned to let go and just see what happens.”
That’s ELDORA in a nutshell. A record about freedom, faith in your own path, and finding gold in simplicity. Chase Rice didn’t just make an album; he built a map to what country music can sound like when you finally stop chasing and start living.
For more on Chase Rice’s new album, make sure to watch our interview below and don’t forget to let us know what you think of ELDORA by either leaving a reaction at the bottom of the post or by sliding into our DMs on Instagram at @celebsecretscountry.
Interview quotes in this feature have been edited and condensed for clarity.
