About Chris:
I started playing piano in
the 4th Grade. My parents wanted me to play, and I liked the instrument,
but found piano lessons frustrating. After my original piano teacher
moved to Alaska, my mom got me lessons with an acquaintance of hers,
who was nice when she wasn't drinking. She used a different set of books,
with a different numbering system. I found myself repeating the
same level material that I had just finished. I tried to argue the point,
but got shouted down. Musicians - they're soooooooo temperamental.
Informally, I got training
from friends and acquaintances. My brother had a friend at college named
Lee who was a self-taught musician. He played guitar, banjo, piano,
and pretty much anything that he was standing near. At the tender age
of 10, I complained to him that I didn't enjoy playing the piano. He
suggested that I had no motivation to play the piano because the material
was dull. My brother had a copy of the John Denver for Easy Guitar Book
(Volume 1), and Lee put that on the piano and told me to play. He said
to play the melody with my right hand and to just play chords with my
left hand. Within seconds I was playing material I was familiar with,
that sounded more or less like what I was supposed to be playing. In
the long run, I didn't go much further in my piano studies, but from
that moment I started training my ear.
In junior high, I started playing
guitar and joined my first band. Initially I was the keyboard player,
but since I didn't have keyboards, the one time we played outside of
school, I ended up playing maracas and singing back-up vocals. I would've
been the third (and weakest) guitarist in the band, so I switched to
bass. My parents bought me a used Bradley Precision copy, which I named
%u201CMick.%u201D My mom also bought a used Peavey 2x15 Bass cabinet and
Peavey Standard head (actually a guitar head, with reverb and distortion,
which some bassists now pay extra for). I played with the stage band
in Junior High, the Largo High School Jazz Band, and in college I was
a Jazz Performance major studying under Hank Levy for a short, but memorable,
time.
If I had $5.00 for every band
I ever played in... that'd be about exactly how much I've made as a
paid musician. Currently I'm playing with Matt and Jon in Concrete Dream,
with occasional joint ventures between our group and Lex & Linda
from Emotional Rex. Here is a partial list of bands that I've played
in from the Golden Grooveyard of Yesteryear:
The Royal Flush (this band
alone had something like 8 different official names in an 18-month span)
Blue Innocence
The Asylum
Resin Kitty
The Psychotic Pickles
Thunderjack (or Springheel
Jack or The New New Thunderhawks)
Big Cam and the Lifters
Don't Let This Happen to You
(a.k.a. Moon Germs)
The Country Breeze Band
Sutter Creek
Bush River
The Last of the Rock and Roll
Cowboys (also The Electric Cowboys)
Stetson
Amaranth
The Bob Zwaska Quartet
Charlie Harley and the Avenue
Boys
Big Daddy Deville and the Boardwalk
Cruisers
Alternate Root
Saint Misbehavin'
Vertigo Black
and the list goes on, to this
day.
Listen to some of Chris's way back music
Contact Chris
