Chris Cagle Q&A

• WHO: Chris Cagle
• WHEN: Friday, 9 p.m. (doors at 7 p.m.)
• WHERE: Flesh, 200 S. 17^th St., McAllen
• COST: $25 general; $45 VIP
• BUY TICKETS: Boot Jack McAllen locations, or at the door 

Chris Cagle, the country artist best known for his number one hit “I Breathe In, I Breathe Out,” hits nightclub Flesh in Downtown McAllen on Friday. He’ll be playing fan favorites such as “What Kinda Gone,” “Chicks Dig It,” and songs from his latest album My Life’s Been a Country Song.

Cagle, who hails from Louisiana but grew up in Texas, is living the life of a country boy, and is making his dreams come true one at a time. In 1994, Cagle dropped out of college and moved to Nashville to pursue a music career, but found little success until five years later when a songwriter published some of his songs. While working at a restaurant, he was discovered as a country artist and signed to Virgin Records Nashville. His first single, “My Love Goes On and On” peaked in the top 20 on the charts.

Cagle recently took some time off to enjoy life, and “drink cold beer, and eat fried chicken,” before his fall tour. Now he’s getting back into shape, and working on his passion other than music: his horse breeding business.

On his ranch in Oklahoma, Cagle is building a riding arena, a barn and more, with a little help from some friends. He put his welding torch down for a few minutes to talk to Festiva about his music, horses, next album and his private pre-show ritual.

Festiva: What made you choose Oklahoma?

Chris: Actually my grandfather always told me when I was a little kid, “If you want to catch a fish, you gotta go where the water is.” And I’ve got kind of a second dream besides music of raising horses … there are a lot of good people around here to help me and they’ve kind of welcomed me with open arms. We’re going to start small and breed for quality and things that you can’t go out and buy. Hopefully we’ll get lucky. We probably won’t make any money at it, but we’ll have a lot of fun.

Festiva: Can you talk to us about the new album? Are you writing the songs this time?

Chris: Yeah. I’m looking at songs, but so far I’ve got four songs that are going to be on the record. But I’m probably going to write 50 or 60 more. I know what I want and I’m kind of going after it daily. It’s good. It’s going to be real good.

Festiva: Are we going to hear more of your romantic ballads, or more of your rowdy songs?

Chris: I don’t know. It’s funny because in the past I feel like my music has been, I guess the saying is, “A mile wide and an inch deep.” And I’m going to try to dig a little deeper, and maybe narrow the feeding trough.

Festiva: Have you always been country?

Chris: Well, yeah. I mean, I can’t help that. I tried out for rock ‘n’ roll bands. Classic rock is kind of my thing. I think it’s evident in a lot of the music. Actually, I love Led Zeppelin. I mean, I’m a redneck. I like rock ‘n’ roll and I like country.

Festiva: If you could do a duet with any rock star, who would it be?

Chris: Oh, Steven Tyler.

Festiva: What song? One of his songs?

Chris: No, hopefully we’d write it. Yeah. There was actually a song that a buddy of mine who wrote “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk” wrote called “Here Kitty, Kitty.” It’s pretty lewd, but if I could, I’d sing that with Steven Tyler.

Festiva: Do you have any pre-show rituals that you do?

Chris: Well, yeah. It’s kind of, uh, a little embarrassing.

Festiva: How so?

Chris: Well, I just … all right. If you print this, print this kind of tastefully, I guess. I lay out everything that I’m going to wear in a certain order, and turn on XM radio, something like “Deep Tracks” or something like that, and blast it real loud. Then I get in the shower and I just basically start out naked, then slowly, but surely take my time and spend about 30 or 40 minutes getting dressed, and I can get dressed in two. But it’s just one of those things that I don’t know why. It’s like, the music that I listen to and the preparation, it’s kind of like when I used to play in football, I had that little ritual.