Two decades have passed since Gavin DeGraw released his seminal breakthrough smash of an album, Chariot, which prompted today’s middle-aged moms to drive around in their Saturns screaming the words to “I Don’t Want to Be.”
The rock song with a signature driving bass line explored the conviction that the singer didn’t have to be anything he wasn’t.
Recently, DeGraw celebrated 20 years of Chariot with Chariot 20, a reimagined version of his debut album helmed by producer Dave Cobb. Cobb stripped away the heavy drums and driving bass in favor of soulful vocals, horns, keys, and a funky, swinging melody.
Chariot 20 is out now.
“Being that it was 20 years, it was a good enough excuse to be a story of its own like, ‘Whoa, 20 years, we can make something of this?’”
DeGraw joked the other option was to lament getting older, which isn’t his style.
“I’d rather be like, ‘Cool, I’m proud of this,” DeGraw said. “I’ve been around for 20 years. This record has been around for 20 years. I want to tip the hat to this record, which changed my life, and do some of the performances that I’ve been leaning towards as the songs have evolved for me.”
Gavin DeGraw is Proud of His 20-year-old Debut
The singer knows some artists in his position who are tired of playing the hits that made them famous. Instead of disappointing fans by not playing his early material, he’s celebrating the songs and how they financially delivered him and his family from “the poor house” with recorded versions of the new arrangements, many of which he’s been playing for years.
“If I have an opportunity to reimagine these and feature these songs, again, I’m still proud of the songs,” he said. “I’m still proud of these copyrights. I spent a lot of time writing these songs and accumulating a repertoire for my first album, and I was very careful to choose songs that I hoped would age well. Something that’s always been on my mind is, ‘How do I hopefully make records that are going to age well, certainly something that ages better than my skin?’” DeGraw said.
He believes Chariot did age well, but he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to rework it and make it even more earthy with Cobb’s help.
DeGraw and Cobb worked together previously on Face the River. DeGraw knew they enjoyed working together, and because of the pandemic, Cobb had room in his schedule to tackle the 2024 version of Chariot.
“I wanted it to be this classic songwriter record, almost like a Seger style … sort of like this American songwriter/Stacks style record,” DeGraw said, adding a very 70s-ish style songwriter record with R&B roots. “And he’s the kind of guy for that. Everything sounds very honest, very sincere, and soulful.”
DeGraw’s brother was the first person who tipped him off that “I Don’t Want to Be” was a hit. The singer said the brothers were living in Hell’s Kitchen, and by that point in his life, he’d shared at least 200 songs with him. Sometimes, he’d tell him one of his songs was “pretty good.” But when DeGraw played him “I Don’t Want to Be,” his brother said: “You finally f*cking got a hit.”
Gavin DeGraw’s Brother Graphically Recognized “I Don’t Want To Be” As a Hit
“It was so crazy,” DeGraw recalled. “It was such an over-the-top reaction for the copyright. It was wild. I thought, ‘Wow, I think I might have something here.’”
Then he sang the song’s chorus for a friend sitting in a New York City café. The man played bass for Cher, and he and DeGraw used to play in bars together.
“He goes, ‘Yo, that’s a hit. It’s a smash,’” DeGraw said. “People near me who I knew were into music had this reaction to that song. That was encouraging when we finally recorded this song. You never know what will ultimately come out because once it leaves the notebook and ends up in the studio, it could become something different.”
But “I Don’t Want to Be” held tight to its integrity. The song played on radio and television, so even more people heard it.
“I was a new artist, so I needed a story,” DeGraw said. “But by the way, that never changes. You always need a story.”
DeGraw’s success is the culmination of a path he’s been on since birth. He grew up in a very musical, artistic New York state household. His mother played and sang in church, and his dad played professionally in bars for years. DeGraw joked his dad’s occupation location was probably why his mom went to church.
He described his dad as “a really unbelievable singer,” almost like an Irish tenor, but said he was rock ‘n roll.
“You Always Need a Story”
“He was very sort of like a McCartney-meets-Sting sort of singer,” DeGraw said.
His dad’s dad wasn’t a professional musician but bought a lot of instruments following World War II and forced his brothers to learn to play.
“He wanted them to hang out and have hootenannies and stuff,” DeGraw said. “We’d have family reunions over at our Uncle Earl’s dairy farm, and people would play and sing around the campfire and camp out. That was just a family culture thing on my dad’s side.”
DeGraw’s maternal great-grandfather was a dance instructor at a hotel in the Catskill Mountains in what he called the “Dirty Dancing era.”
“I’ve got these cool photos buried somewhere with him, with Ella Fitzgerald and Sam Cook,” he said, adding that his mother’s family didn’t want her to marry his dad because they thought he was too talented to get married. “The most important thing to my great-granddad was talent. And he thought my dad was the most talented person on the planet. He was like, ‘I’ve seen everybody. You’re better than everybody.’”
His parents were high school sweethearts who stayed married their entire lives. DeGraw said the biggest blessing of his career was to be able to help them retire from work.
“I was very, very lucky,” he said. “The best gift of all was the feeling they wouldn’t have to work their regular jobs anymore. That was the biggest reward. We trade the time of our, which is life, for money. And if you can get out of that job, you can get what’s left of your life that belongs to you instead of your boss. That felt really good.”
(Photo by Daniel DeSlover/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock)
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