Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Braves’ d’Arnaud strives to hit the right notes
As a California kid with big dreams, Chase d’Arnaud’s musical tastes spanned a wide spectrum during his formative years.
In a world before iTunes and Spotify, d’Arnaud consumed the sounds of Daft Punk and Ludacris, Blink-182 and Ice Cube, Smash Mouth and Snoop Dogg any way he could. His tastes were not confined to one genre.
In the car — with his mother Marita, a classically trained music teacher, behind the wheel — d’Arnaud sang along to a different tune, at least than most children: “The Phantom of the Opera.’’
“[My mother] would put it on, I would sing the guy’s part and Travis [my brother] would sing the girl’s part,’’ said d’Arnaud (pronounced d’Arno). “We had the lyrics nailed down. Now I can’t really recollect every single part of it, but Travis would hit this note that was insane, higher than my mom could hit. Once he hit puberty, that kind of fell apart.’’
Most of d’Arnaud’s time this month is devoted to trying to earn a spot on the Atlanta Braves during spring training at Disney World’s ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex. Away from the field, d’Arnaud relaxes with another passion.
He is an aspiring musician who is expected to begin releasing material for his untitled second album soon.
“Baseball, I’ve been doing professionally for almost 10 years now,’’ said d’Arnaud, 30. “I know what my strengths and my struggles are. In music, I still look at myself like I’m a student. In baseball, I’m still a student. Always.
“I’m trying to get better and learning, but in music, even more so because I just started doing it at that professional level last year.’’
D’Arnaud, whose first album, “Seven Ghosts,” came out in 2016, describes his sound as Americana — a mix between country and rock music. He said he performed at about six shows in 2016, including a music and arts festival in Tennessee called Bonnaroo. He was among the opening acts for Lady Antebellum, a Grammy Award-winning group, at a country music fair in Atlanta last October.
D’Arnaud even played after a Braves game at Turner Field.
“He works really hard at everything he does, and that’s what got him to the majors,’’ said guitarist Jimmy Harris, who plays with d’Arnaud. “He applies that same thing to music. He’s like a sponge, and he keeps working on it until he gets it.
“I can’t say it’s been one big thing. It’s just been consistent progress.”
Guitarist Nick Pirtle also works with d’Arnaud.
“His songwriting is not really the status-quo artist out there,” Pirtle said. “All of his songs are real life about people, about real events in his life. I really took to that, compared to another artist, who’s trying to be the biggest country thing or something.”
D’Arnaud has been around music all of his life. With her large Filipino side of the family, his mother held recitals for them — about 50 in all. She runs an after-school, performingarts center near the family’s home in Long Beach, Calif.
D’Arnaud’s father, Lance, plays the trumpet and piano and started to learn how to play the trombone when he was 55. Travis d’Arnaud, a catcher with the New York Mets, has a keyboard. Their younger sister, Leslie, is a premed student at UCLA and stopped playing in middle school.
Two of Chase d’Arnaud’s uncles are pianists, and his cousin, Genevieve Artadi, is an electronic pop musician.
“Music is an emotional outlet,” d’Arnaud said. “It develops a part of your brain. It helps you see things outside the box, [and] it is very mathematical — 12 notes and only a finite amount of chord progressions. You have to get as creative as you can to make something different since there are only so many.”
D’Arnaud taps into his personal experiences to fuel his music. Fox example, the song “Seven Ghosts’’ reminds him of a former girlfriend, whom he dated on and off for seven years. D’Arnaud wrote “Sucker,’’ a single expected to be released this month, while thinking about Kaitlyn, his then-fiancée whom he married in December. The song told a story through the eyes of a young boy with a crush on his babysitter who tries to impress her by hitting a home run.
“I like the tenor of his voice, and I liked the meanings of his songs,” Marita d’Arnaud said. “I was really happy that he found that as part of his life.”
D’Arnaud’s vocal coach, Jan Smith, said his singing voice is not what someone would expect to hear if they engaged him in conversation.
“His voice is darker and reedier,’’ Smith said. “He has a very unique vocal thumbprint.
“I’ve seen him perform on several occasions. He draws people in, and he is also extremely likable on stage. That’s going to carry him far in terms of people responding to him and genuinely liking him, regardless of all the other stuff.”
That other stuff includes baseball.
D’Arnaud broke into the majors with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2011, three years after being drafted in the fourth round out of Pepperdine.
He joined the Braves, his third major-league team, last year and appeared in a career-high 84 games. D’Arnaud, who plays the infield and outfield, hit .245 and belted his only majorleague home run against Justin Nicolino of the Miami Marlins on July 1 in Atlanta.
“Before my first [concert] performance, I felt the same way I did before my first big-league at-bat,’’ d’Arnaud said. “You’ve got the crowd there, and the music starts, and all you can do is trust that you’ve trained hard enough and practiced enough so that you won’t go up there and blank on stage or hit the wrong note.”