Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Sioux City

Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Sioux City


SIOUX CITY
SIOUX CITY
844.222.7625
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Information Anthem & Battery Park
Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Sioux City
111 3rd Street
Sioux City, Iowa 51101

Rock Shop (Box Office) Hours:

Sunday-Thursday: 9am-9pm
Friday-Saturday: 9am-Midnight

Contact Us:
Rock Shop: 712-224-7659
24/7 Phone Line: 844-222-7625
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CHRIS YOUNG

CHRIS YOUNG

Chris Young has accomplished more by 29 than some artists do in a lifetime. Already a Grammy-nominated recording artist, he’s also a dynamic live performer consistently in demand, an international ambassador for his genre, a talented songwriter with six Number Ones to his name – by the way, he wrote four of them – and a handsome charmer to boot. Now, with the release of his fourth album, A.M., the man known for his classic baritone and melt-your-heart ballads knows how to have a good time, too. 

Still, when all is said and done, it only takes two words to sum up the career of Chris Young: Definitely country.

“I’ve always loved country music, and I really liked singing it as a kid,” Young remembers. “So I was like, ‘That’s what I want to do.’ I just kind of always knew.” His first record purchase was Keith Whitley’s L.A. to Miami, followed by the likes of Randy Travis, Tracy Lawrence and Brooks & Dunn. He sang so much around the house that he jokes his parents “blocked him out.” But as puberty approached, the young tenor found himself facing adversity for the first time. “I was singing all of Vince Gill’s stuff, and then my voice changed,” Young laughs. “For about a year there, I thought, ‘Oh my God, I’m ruined. It’s the end of the world!’ And then I realized I could sing Randy Travis songs. It worked out well.”

That’s something of an understatement for the Murfreesboro, TN native. Blessed with parents who encouraged his art, Young soon found his way into musical theater, jazz training, and six years of classical voice, which honed his emerging baritone into something truly special. In his early teens, Young convinced his mom to drive him into Nashville so he could sit in with bands and work with local songwriters; by 16, he’d formed a band with some older guys from Middle Tennessee State University, and they started playing George Strait and Garth Brooks covers in whatever clubs would have them. “I was entirely too young to be playing in bars,” Young says. “I would have these big Xs in chunky black marker on my hands. I can’t imagine we were that good, but really, that was me enjoying the heck out of what I did.”

Everyone starts somewhere, and Young was starting to hone his craft. “People were telling me to learn to write songs,” he says. “I’d written poems and stuff, but I didn’t really know how. Which is funny, because you don’t necessarily have to know how to write a song. You just sit down and create something. You make it up.” He cut his first independent record after high school, using his own money to fund 500 or so CDs and take himself on a short tour of Florida, where he played mostly Borders bookstores. “One day, I played to three people,” Young remembers. “Two were playing chess, and the other person was reading a book. When I said, ‘Well, this will be my last song,’ the lady reading the book clapped.” 

If you’re starting to think, Wow, this kid has a work ethic, you’re getting the idea. Three semesters at Nashville’s Belmont University and a short stint at MTSU taught him he wasn’t cut out for college life. Instead, he picked up more than a diploma interning for a song publishing company owned by Laura Stroud, the wife of his future producer, James Stroud. Soon after, he scored an offer for a regular weekly gig as the frontman for the house band at Cowboys Dancehall in Arlington, one of the biggest country clubs in Texas. He dropped out of college, and began earning an equivalent of a Ph.D in the honky tonks of Texas, where he played more than 150 dates a year. He was 20. “We would open for anybody who came through – Lonestar, Dwight Yoakam. That’s where I got real experience working with a band, lights, in-ear monitors, everything. I’m pretty lucky,” he admits. “When I dropped out of college and moved to Texas, my parents didn’t disown me.” He soon returned to Tennessee and landed a recording contract with RCA Nashville. “I loved that label,” Young says. “It was a heritage label that some of my favorite artists had been on. Keith Whitley. John Anderson. I think it’s where I was supposed to be.” 

Four albums and seven years later, Young looks back with some amazement. “It’s wild to think that I’ve been around that long,” he says. “People always told me, ‘Hey, the record deal isn’t the finish line.’ It’s the beginning of the work,” he says. “I probably did four full radio tours starting out, just going around saying, ‘Hey, still here… not going away…’ I think RCA saw my work ethic. They kept me around.” Ask Young today how it felt as the momentum began to turn, and he’ll say, with typical humility, “After the first hit [“Gettin' You Home (The Little Black Dress Song)”], it was like, ‘Okay, thank God I made enough money that I can buy a really small place to live.’ After the second hit [“The Man I Want To Be”], it was a mixture of validation and just relief. ‘Okay, I’m not a one hit wonder.’”  Far from it: He would chart five consecutive Number One singles, co-writing four of them, and receiving plenty of Grammy, ACM, and CMA nominations along the way.

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