So, Chris set about learning the guitar. His first guitar a student classical actually belonged to his younger sister, Nancy who his parents had decided should learn to play guitar. But for Nancy, playing guitar meant painful fingertips AND having to keep her nails short. And so ended her not-so-promising endeavor to bring the musical lilt of a $20 nylon string guitar to the unwashed masses.  But their loss was Chris’ gain. He took this guitar (which had been sitting in a closet for close to 10 years) and started awkwardly feeling his way through the Grateful Dead songbook. In some earlier years, he had found a greater love of music through the improvisational jams of the Grateful Dead. Chris doggedly pursued this course and moved his way up to a new guitar. One with metal strings and a much thinner neck…an Ibanez ‘59er. Now, this guitar did have strings and it did have a nice neck, but that was about it. It had no pickups, a semi-hollow body and no finish on it. But the price was right, so he discarded his faithful nylon guitar and set about his road to rock superstardom.

Needless to say, the road to rock stardom is filled with many pitfalls and a few revelations to boot. Chris realized that if people were going to be truly annoyed by his lack of abilities, he’d have to get a guitar they could hear. His girlfriend loved that Ibanez because, well the truth is, you couldn’t hear how truly bad he was with it. But when he got his acoustic guitar, there was no longer any avoiding it. Man, did he SUCK!

But, he plodded on for the first 5 years and eventually met some other guitar players who shook their heads at him and said, “Dude!  Don’t play it like that!  Play it like this!” All this information was stored in his memory and incorporated into his playing until finally after 15 years, he reached the point where he is today. Along the way, he has moved back and forth between California and South Carolina once or twice and continues to look forward to his next move, as changes of scenery are always good for the soul. He currently resides 30 miles east of San Francisco in Lafayette, CA.

Chris plays mostly contemporary songs by artists like Dave Matthews, Ray LaMontagne, Paul Weller and John Mayer. But his parents had exceptional taste in music once, and they instilled in him a love for artists like Cat Stevens, James Taylor, Neil Diamond and John Denver. He’ll occasionally play one of their songs if the moment seems right. And there are other forays into music that he’ll occasionally explore with artists like the Jerry Garcia, Widespread Panic, Phish, and even some R&B artists like Bill Withers and the Commodores all arranged for solo acoustic guitar. Chris is currently working on several new original tunes and hopes to be able to seed them into his setlist slowly so as not to scare his audience away.

His revenge on his brother was thwarted however when Sumner came to a show and pronounced it, “Not too bad.” Perhaps one day the eye-poking incident will be avenged in a suitable manner. Chris bides his time until that day.