Chattanooga Times Free Press - ChattanoogaNow
Returns to Riverbend with new music
When Mitch Rossell played Riverbend last summer, he was still basking in the glow of having written “Ask Me How I Know,” which Garth Brooks recorded.
The song became a No. 1 hit for the country superstar in October 2017. In fact, it was Brooks’ first No. 1 in 10 years since “More Than a Memory” in 2007.
Tonight, Rossell returns to Riverbend, and one of his original songs will again be in the spotlight. But this one is brand new — a single just released this month: “All I Need to See.”
Rossell said in a phone interview that the song was inspired by the woman who is now his wife. She and their son are featured in the lyric video to “All I Need to See,” which was released May 20.
“I wrote this song in 2015. At the time, we were dating. It’s not necessarily where I thought we were in our relationship then, but as our relationship developed and I look back, it’s almost like I wrote it for her now. It’s so real to where we are now,” he says.
Rossell says response to his new single has been “overwhelmingly good,” and the song’s lyric video notched more than 2.1 million views on YouTube in its first six days.
Rossell is a graduate of Silverdale Baptist Academy and UTC. After emailing Brooks some songs he’d been working on, the two struck up a friendship and eventually Brooks asked him if he’d like to play onstage with him in 2015. That grew to opening for the country star, which he did through Brooks’ world tour last year.
“All I Need to See” is the first in a series of releases Rossell plans over the next year and a half, and eventually those singles will be combined into a package.
“We’ve cut about 16 songs in the past eight months or so. We’ve got a lot of songs on deck, and I’m just trying to feel out the order how I want to release them. I’ve just written so many songs, that I wanted to get some of them on tape to see how they came out. You never know, you might get them on tape and they sound wrong, and then it’s back to the drawing board.”
Rossell also points out that as an independent artist it’s up to him to keep his name in front of the public and keep his music on their electronic devices. By spacing out the releases of new music, he accomplishes that.
“I’ve got a long way to go to get where I want to be. You spend so much money and time putting a package together, then it all comes out in one moment. Unfortunately, in the world we live in, the attention span is so short that you have to be visible constantly. If not: out of sight, out of mind. If you release all the new music at once, you have a big moment and then it’s gone.”
He says tonight’s Riverbend audience will hear some of this new music.
“I’ve never had a piano player at a gig I’ve done. I’m working on getting a guy out for this. I’ll cover some new stuff, play the single for the first live audience and some of my favorites.”