Chris Janson Admits Leaving Warner Music Nashville Was a Mistake

Chris Janson says nobody believed him, again. The “Buy Me a Boat” singer hoped to do a hard pivot and return to the record label that he signed with when the song went viral in 2015.

Who does that?

“Everyone around me, and I mean everyone, said, ‘That’s not going to happen. There’s no way.’ I mean, how could that happen?” he recalls, talking to Taste of Country Nights host Evan Paul.

Guess what? It happened.

In April, Janson re-signed with Warner Music Nashville, and last month he released his new Wild Horses album. “Me & a Beer” is the radio single, but deep cuts like “Hardest Huntin’ Season” (with Jamey Johnson), “The Broken” and “Wild Horses” are more representative of where his head is at.

“I just follow my heart,” he shares. “I just didn’t feel right where I was. For no other reason, I just didn’t feel right in my heart about it.”

If I don’t feel right in my heart about stuff, I just don’t do it anymore,” Janson adds.

The full interview is available at the Taste of Country Nights: On Demand podcast. For the first time ever, the podcast is available in full on YouTube, but you can also find it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and more.

In late 2022, Janson signed with Big Machine Label Group, and he released The Outlaw Side of Me the following June. “All I Need Is You” was a Top 5 radio airplay hit, his first since “Done” from 2019. Another song called “Whatcha See Is Whatcha Get” broke the Top 40.

Talking to ToC, he alluded to creative differences between him and this label partner, so when it came time to create new music, he went back to basics and wrote, recorded and produced each track from Wild Horses at a cabin studio on his Tennessee property.

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“(I) set up a little studio shop, smoked cigars, and just did it the old school way,” he recalls.

Shortly after, he reached out to Cris Lacy, Warner Nashville’s Co-President. Janson worked closely with her during his first tenure at the label — back then she ran A&R.

“I just said, ‘Hey look, I feel like I made a mistake leaving,'” he shares. “I’m not in a place where I really have to have it … but I just want to make music over here again.'”

The record was done by this point, and not only did she agree to re-sign him, she agreed to allow him to bring his Harpeth 60 imprint over. This gives Janson creative control, but also puts the pressure on him to promote his own music to radio.

“How many times do you hear of an artist leaving a major record label and then going back to that major record label three years later and also saying, ‘Oh by the way I’d like to have my own imprint so I can keep creative control’?”

While he led with the feel good “Me & a Beer,” it’s clear Janson hopes he gets the chance to promote songs like the title track to country radio.

He and his wife Kelly wrote the free-spirited rocker with the ’80s and ’90s hit songwriter Pat Bunch (Faith Hill‘s “Wild Ones”) before she died in 2023. She had told him she’d heard his live show was like a wild horse that was never meant to be tamed.

“I wanted it to be the title of the album just because it’s sort of, in so many ways, a middle finger to the person at my last record label who told me that they didn’t hear it, it didn’t sound like a hit.”