It was another Monday evening Open Mic at Lestat's West and
after some talented and perhaps not so talented (but very enthusiastic)
performers sang their two songs, it was Chris Carpenter's turn. The first notes
on his piano were strong and definite and when he began to sing, the audience
was riveted to his performance. "Must have performed as a child," I thought.
"Piano lessons at the age of three?" Several days later I had a conversation
with an Adams Avenue merchant who knew his history. My guesses were way off the
mark.
Chris'
journey began early. Born in Savannah, Georgia, his was the only white family
in an Afro-American neighborhood. In 1972, when Chris was four, his parents
divorced. Never seeing eye-to-eye with her parents, his mom, Sandra, left home
with her young son. They carried all of their belongings on their backs,
including her guitar. Sandra was a leather crafter, so before heading out on
their long journey, she helped her son make his own leather backpack and
Underdog mask. They first traveled to Vermont where Sandra met her new
boyfriend, Larry. He was a wild-eyed, wild-haired hippie who, carrying a large
accordion that he referred to as "the beast," joined mother and son on their
trek west. Within the next few years they had traveled through many states.
Along the way, they hooked up with others who played guitars and sang original
and folk music covers. Chris fondly remembers a guitarist named "Bird" who once
joined them by an evening fire underneath the giant sandstone formations in
Utah's Zion Park while they sang songs like "The Weight" or "Rocky Mountain
High."
"I didn't
have any toys as a kid," Chris explained. "My toy was the world and my
experience was with nature and my surroundings. We climbed up cliffs to explore
ruins. We lived with the Indians in Havasu. In those days my diet consisted of
rock bread that we cooked in the coals, pinto beans or brown rice, and maybe
we'd get some vegetables if we were in a city. It was a treat to have fresh
greens. On my sixth birthday we hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and the
ranger came and brought his guitar. It was a big deal that he came down the two
miles and hung out with us. We all sat around a campfire and I enjoyed eating canned
tangerines. They tasted delicious. It was wonderful!"
The trio
walked across Arizona and New Mexico, following the train tracks along the way.
The goal was to reach the top of Sunspot National Solar Observatory where
Larry, who was an MIT mathematician, worked a deal with the government folks to
do filing in exchange for using their telescope to look for whatever it was
that he wanted to find.
"Did he
ever find it?" I asked Chris.
"I don't
know," he said, "because we left him there."
Chris was
home-schooled during those years in the most primitive ways, but he was smart
and loved to read. Without children's books, however, he read whatever he could
get his hands on, most of which was adult literature that he didn't really
understand.
"Like
Siddhartha," he said with a smile.
Chris and
his mom continued traveling through Mexico with plans to go to Tahiti and
Guatemala on a long bizarre route. They rode the C-class train cars together
with the chickens. William, a new boyfriend of his mother's, was Chris' new
stepfather and a wandering gypsy. When they got to the Guatemalan border, they
were turned away because William looked too much like a hippie. Instead, they
headed for Mexico City where they boarded a plane to Hawaii. They lived on the
beach for the next four months in fishing shacks. Chris enjoyed hanging out
with a Filipino man who liked to play cards and eat rice cakes.
"I was
looking for connections with other people, but I couldn't build relationships
because we were always on the move," Chris laments.
After
Hawaii, the trio moved to northern Washington near the Canadian border. When
they needed money, Sandra and William worked for the forest service. When
Sandra was six months pregnant with Chris' sister, she was jumping out of
helicopters to fight fires.
"A guy
named Tom and his wife invited us to build a house on their land. We cut down
everything by hand, no power tools. We were under a time pressure because my
mom was due at the end of December and there we were that month in the thick snow,
my mom in our army tent while my stepdad and I were peeling poles and making
things happen. We had the walls and roof up when we delivered my sister right
there. I watched her birth. Once I got through the trauma of hearing my mother
scream like nothing I'd ever heard before in my life, I realized what was
happening, so in a sense it was okay but in another sense my insides were
crawling!" His sister, Surya, was the first bicentennial baby born in the small
town. The community presented his family with prizes of disposable diapers and
formula, which the baby's parents refused to use.
Shortly
after the birth of his sister, Chris and his family set off on another
adventure over the next three years, exploring communities throughout Utah and
Oregon and looking for other individuals who sought self-sufficiency and were
one with the earth. When Chris was 11 and living in Oregon, his family joined
forces with another family to begin their own community on 80 acres of land in
northern California.
"It was a
big swatch of uncut beauty," Chris remembers. "We did everything ourselves:
hand fenced, hand dug; I was a working kid and was forming good work ethics.
And we were all into natural healing. Once I got blood poisoning and I spent an
hour chewing up comfrey to pack as a giant poultice on my arm. By the next day
it was sucked out."
The area
was remote and winter was especially hard for them with a 50-mile drive to go
shopping as there was no passage between the river and mountains. So when Chris
was 14 he took one of those trips with Sandra and William, except while his
parents were running errands in town, Chris met a mom and her daughter. The
daughter was a bit older than he and he thought that she was really cute.
"I ended up
jumping in their car and I broke away!" Chris confessed.
They headed
for their home in Sunburst, just outside of Santa Barbara. He helped out in the
mother's store. Then a couple offered to send him to school.
"They were
millionaires and they put me in polo shirts," he said. "It was strange because
I'd never really had possessions and suddenly I was getting them. I always knew
how to capture a rabbit or survive in the wild, but I didn't know what "gay"
meant or how to pay an electric bill."
There was
also all new music that he was unfamiliar with. Up until then his only musical
influence was his mother's songs and tribal drums. Exposure to other kids his
age was crucial at that point. Another neighborhood family wanted to take him
in, one with older kids. The husband managed sewage plants in Mendocino. Chris
would ride into town with him. One day Chris approached the principal at the
high school, who allowed him to attend classes and live in the school. Chris
was given a master key to all of the doors. At one point he sectioned off part
of the home economics building and opened a café where he sold breakfast food
to make money. At night he slept in the library or the music department's
recording studio where there were lots of pillows. But he was terribly lonely,
especially over the holidays when he was by himself. Few of his fellow students
knew that he was living in the school because it was embarrassing to him.
Finally, when he was 16, the principal came up with an idea. He had a friend
who was a child psychologist and jazz pianist who wanted to start a foster
program.
"Ira
Rosenburg became my foster parent for the next two years," Chris said. "We're
still in contact."
While Chris
was in high school, he began to play drums. He continued for the next seven
years. "I played all sorts of drums - in rock bands and for the school football
band. For four years I played in rock and blues bands in Mendocino."
Ira had
been a big influence on him for piano and songwriting although Chris never took
piano lessons. The singing began when Chris was about 20, playing in a group
called the Fungis (pronounced fun guys). A band member said that his voice was
much better than their female singer's. While working at a recording booth on
the Santa Cruz boardwalk, a man who was signing up performers for a new TV
talent show approached Chris, encouraging him to send in a VHS of his
performance, but he never did. That moment has always stuck with him.
With his
early entrepreneurial experience, his next move to Washington D.C. began his
career in retail sales management. He helped open the first Nordstrom's on the
East Coast. While there, he performed Elton John tunes before 500 people at a
benefit concert. That experience inspired him. After three years in D.C. he was
transferred to Nordstrom in San Diego. When the Gulf War broke out, the economy
took a dive. Chris was let go from his job along with six other people. That's
when he got serious about his music and songwriting.
"I played
at Lestat's when there was a little stage in the window of the coffee shop.
I've probably sunk a good grand into recordings with Louie [Brazier] at
Lestat's over the past 10 years. Now I'm shopping for musicians for my next
recording."
Lestat's is
one of his favorite places for music. "I'm hard pressed to find a place where people
listen at an open mic; the Lestat's audience is incredibly supportive of other
musicians. People buy more of my CDs than anyone else at open mic." He also
sells his recordings on CDBaby. Chris likes the exposure to a lot of musicians.
He's been playing at Humphreys and entering songwriting competitions. "I've
been in the grand finals a couple of times and got spots in the top five."
It's not
surprising that his inspirations are drawn from the same musicians to which his
musical style is compared.
"I get
David Gray, Billy Joel, Elton John. I'm also inspired by Bruce Hornsby and Ben
Folds. I love the melodic depth of a Taupin/John song but I also love the open
frankness of a Ben Folds song. I'd like to think that I'm a mix of the two."
His future
aspiration is to turn his music career into a full-time profession but not to
play cover songs.
"The
business side of me, as the guy who's been in retail most of my life, and the
broke kid, I get a bit concerned about the money end of the music business. But
I just love writing music. I have a passion for my stories," Chris stated
enthusiastically. "[These days] my mom does a Patsy Cline act in big shows all
over the East Coast - large convention centers with 6,000 people in the
audience. She's a fascinating woman. She goes by the name CJ Harding and you
can check her out on her website: CJHarding.com".
I asked
Chris if his mom is still a hippie. That made him laugh.
"She's
still into health and herbs and still stays away from man-made medications. But
her lifestyle is definitely more modern. Today she carries a cellphone and has
a condo in Florida with a great big TV."