Chase Arrington's outlet

Birmingham rock musician Chase Arrington has had a passionate, lifelong love affair with the guitar, an instrument he began playing when he was only 10 years old.

“What I like about it is the rawness and the honesty,” he said. “There’s so much room for interpretation and freedom and expressiveness.”

Arrington said he especially likes playing live.

“You’re able to take all the things you’ve felt for the past day or week or month and just let that go,” he said.

And the guitar, the signature rock ’n’ roll instrument, has a tremendous power, Arrington said.

“There’s something about playing a guitar solo over some music and just making it something that’s really a statement,” he said.

Arrington will continue seeking to make his own personal statement with the instrument when he plays The Nick on July 9, opening for The Steppin Stones, a South Carolina rock trio. He will play in support of his first solo recording, “Signs of Life,” a six-song EP he released in January. And the gig will be the next small step in Arrington’s long quest to make a living doing what he loves: playing music.

Arrington told Iron City Ink more about this quest, which led him to give up a lucrative career in engineering, and about “Signs of Life” just prior to another gig at The Nick in June, when he appeared with Mississippi vocalist Shane Russell as part of their acoustic-rock project, Firing Embers.

The prospect of opening for The Steppin Stones has Arrington “really stoked,” he said.

“They’re really good, really tight. They’re what rock music should be,” he said.

Arrington, 27, is an Oak Mountain High School graduate who earned a degree in mechanical engineering from UAB in 2012 but turned back to music full time within a few months. 

According to Arrington’s website, he has played more than 400 shows, including numerous gigs with Birmingham band The Haulers.

His inspirations have included such guitar gods as Eddie Van Halen, Joe Perry of Aerosmith and Slash of Guns N’ Roses, and those influences are evident in the hard-rocking tunes on “Signs of Life.”

The EP is also an indicator of Arrington’s increasing maturity as a musician. “It started out as a project to see if I could write an entire album by myself,” Arrington said.

With the exception of “Midnight Calling,” with Russell on vocals, the songs on the EP are instrumentals, allowing room for interpretation by listeners. 

“Each song means something to me, but when other people listen to it, they might have a different take on it, just like looking at abstract art,” Arrington said. 

“Signs of Life” comes from an intensely personal place, he said.

“The name and a lot of the themes in the album came from a dark time in my life,” Arrington said. That “dark time” included the loss of his 88-year-old maternal grandmother, with whom he forged a powerful bond in the months before she died.

“That’s where the emotional storm and reflection on the album comes from,” he said.

The EP is a story about love, loss and hope, according to the website.

The show at The Nick, located at 2514 10th Ave. S., will be a chance for Arrington to show his increasing confidence as a writer and performer, he said.

“I’ll be playing some new songs that aren’t on the album, (and) I’ll be singing,” he said.

Arrington said he wrote the lyrics for the new material, and he’ll play with a drummer, bassist and second guitarist who also plays keyboards.

More shows with Firing Embers are in the offing, as well, he said. He and Russell have written material for about nine months.

“I can’t put a label on it,” Arrington said. “It’s acoustic rock, and it’s edgy. Because it’s not in any specific genre, we can do a whole lot of stuff.”

Arrington, who helps support himself by giving guitar lessons, said he will continue to make music his work as well as his passion.

“That’s why I quit the engineering job,” he said. “I had it for four months, and I was making good money, but I wasn’t playing, and it was eating away at me. It’s like I’m dying.”

“I need my outlet, to be able to play,” Arrington added. “When I do, everything is fine.”

For more information, go to chasearringtonmusic.com.