Fireside Seats

While Edmond Memorial played rival Edmond North on Nov. 14, one couple—just across the street from the riotous postseason game—set up string lights, built a fire, and prepared a woodland stage in their backyard. Jessica and Caleb had dreamed of hosting house shows in the hollow carved from the brush behind their home since the two got married there last year. The first musician they invited to their sacred space was their friend and local singer/songwriter Chase Kerby.

“Intimate” begins to describe the atmosphere, and “thoughtfully curated” completes the picture. A table on the house’s patio served carefully crafted tuna tartare sandwiches and elote cake for guests to graze. The charcuterie board featured persimmons and gooseberries alongside your more usual fruit and cheese suspects. The makeshift bar served two cocktails: an old fashioned and a fernet and coke. The bartender, who I overheard was a pastor at a nearby church, kindly explained to me that fernet (a liquor I’d never heard of) is often referred to as a ‘bartender’s handshake.’

As they made their way to the hollow, guests sat on small benches situated around a keyboard, a microphone, and a propped up guitar case with “Chase Kerby” written in giant white letters.

Over the next few hours, Kerby performed the entire length of his new album, “Saved Seats,” to a captivated audience of 25, interspersing the acoustic numbers with personal stories and comments.

It was a one-of-a-kind and refreshing experience, especially for a world increasingly obsessed with stadium tours. Every “thirddd…downnn” and faint Drake chorus that drifted from the Memorial football game felt like a comical reminder of the unusual musical gathering. For Kerby, though, the concert felt as gratifying as any stadium show he could’ve played. “I felt like I had just played Wembley,” Kerby said, in an interview with the Gazette.

“Saved Seats” is Kerby’s first full album. And, the collection is what Kerby considers an “autobiographical album,” one that digs deep into his past experiences with unapologetic honesty. “You have to understand that when it’s just you and you’re making your own art, that is the one chance that you have to be more honest with yourself than ever before,” Kerby said.

The album title references the emotional space––the “saved seats,” if you will—we hold for people. Collectively, the songs weave a delicate picture of the complex feelings that accompany difficult breakups, the death of a loved one, learning to let go, and learning to hold on. “Saved Seats” establishes Kerby as a lyrical force capable of embracing vulnerability.

But, such vulnerability didn’t always come easily to him. “It’s been such a process to just get here,” he said. “I had to back off from a lot of stuff, and really kind of step out of the scene for a while to find myself again. But, I’m glad he was still in there.”

Kerby has been in the Oklahoma City music scene for 25 years, having previously been a part of a handful of bands—one of which went on to tour with the All-American Rejects. He also had a stint on The Voice, which he described as both an “isolating experience” and hard to look back on because of his father’s death soon after. “I never really knew where I fit in with anything,” the singer/songwriter said, reflecting on his past projects.

Creating “Saved Seats” gave Kerby the opportunity to make something that was truly his own.

Even the process of recording and mixing the songs was a practice in trusting himself and his art. “I started to realize that I couldn’t afford to go to a studio; I couldn’t afford to hire all these people to play on it,” said Kerby, talking about when he first started “Saved Seats.”

“I had just a little two-channel interface, so I made the whole album in my apartment. I played everything on it, from acoustic guitar, classical guitar, synthesizer, keyboards, piano, percussion, bass, electric guitar, slide guitar, and all the vocals.” The only other people to be featured on the forthcoming album are Amanda Fortney, who played violin on three songs, and Zach Stabler, who played bass on two.

Yet, for an album produced with an unusual caliber of independence, it was also the evident child of Kerby’s supportive community. From the laptop his friend leant him to the album cover photos shot by his girlfriend to the unwavering support from his mother, Kerby makes it clear that it was his “core circle of people who made [the album] come to fruition.”

“The Pass,” one of the most impactful songs performed that night, was written when Kerby’s friend and bandmate Beau Jennings told (or, rather, dared) Kerby to write a song using no metaphors, a stray from the lyricist’s poetic style. The result was a beautifully descriptive and unmistakably tender account of the childhood trips Kerby and his dad would take to Colorado: “It’s me and my dad in a ‘90 Corolla / driving to places outside Oklahoma / 500 bucks in the bank / and a quarter is left in the tank / the closer to the summit, the closer to the rain.”

“I am proud of it,” Kerby said about “Saved Seats,” thoughtfully. “Every day that goes by I’ll listen to a couple tunes and think ‘I should have mixed this differently’ because I’ve never mixed my own album. But, I produced, mixed, and played almost everything on it. And, you know what? That’s not bad.”

For Kerby, the gratifying process of making the album has informed where he’s headed in the future. “I want to lean into being an artist,” Kerby said. “It’s a strange thing to say when you’re about to be 41 years old. I’ve already tried all this stuff, but now I need to be me. I mean, this is the poorest I’ve ever been in my life, but it’s also the happiest I’ve been in years.”

After the show ended, audience members waited around to share their thoughts, ask him questions, or simply congratulate him. “That is the best byproduct of making music, the connection afterwards,” Kerby said.

One 12-year-old asked Kerby if his album is available on vinyl because, of course, he wanted to add it to his vinyl collection. “That’s the coolest [thing] that’s ever happened to me,” Kerby laughed. “A kid wants my album on vinyl. That makes two of us.”

For those who want to listen to “Saved Seats”—before its prospective vinyl release—Kerby is planning to release the first single, “Death of a Salesman,” in January. Two more singles, “Freezing in the Summertime” and “The Pass” will be released in February and March, before the full album release in April. You can find Chase Kerby on Instagram at @chasekerbymusic.

This article appears in Nov 26 2025.