Interview with Chris Chandler

Chris Chandler

Kerrville Folk Festival 2008

It took one year for me to finally sit down with Chris Chandler for a conversation after his performance at Threadgill Theater on May 30, 2007. The photo was taken backstage just before the show. His cast included (not limited to) Oliver Steck, Anne Feeney, Stephanie Corby, Tom Bianchi and Adam & Kris, performing many of our most beloved folk songs and songs of protest, beautifully integrated into Chris’ works and as a musical backdrop. He performed all or portions of ten of his major works in a marathon 73-minute show, which also included an appearance by the Angel of the 9^th Ward of New Orleans.

FAF: I attended your stunning and now legendary performance at Threadgill Theater last year, and have listened to the CD of it since that time.

CHRIS: Well thank you. I’m glad you liked it.

FAF: That was a fairly involved production. Is that what you normally do, put productions like that together? Or are you usually a single act?

CHRIS: I’m almost always at least a duo. I do very few solo shows. When I’m on a stage at festivals, I’m going to try to put on as good a show as I possibly can. Kerrville Folk Festival has so many singer songwriters and so many talented musicians. Since I’ve been coming here for a long time, I’ve gotten to be friends with them and they were willing to just join in and I think we had about 10 people onstage that night. It was a lot of work and they trust me to know, to get the flow of how they’re going to enter and exit; and I’m honored to have that sort of trust that allowed me to choreograph a show like that. I don’t have that sort of talent pool to draw from on every show; but typically, many of the festivals, I do have that luxury.

FAF: It really did come together well. Did you write a script for that?

CHRIS: No, there was not a script. They are pieces that I have been doing, sort of a retrospective of what I’ve been doing over the past 20 years. This is my 20^th year performing and I have a new boxed set out that’s celebrating that 20 years. There have been 13 CDs and 10 tapes of the various performances I’ve done over the years, and I was happy to put it all together in one little set. It’s not the complete set; it’s just sort of a ‘best of’ from the 20 years. And that’s kind of what that set was last year.

FAF: When did you become inspired to become a performer of social justice issues?

CHRIS: I’ve always been interested in social justice issues, since I was a child. I began my work on social justice issues in college. At that time, censorship was the big issue, and I put together a performance for a student-based performing group, a theater piece.

FAF: Where was that?

CHRIS: That was at the North Carolina School of the Arts. And I started writing political folk songs. I grew up wanting to be Bob Dylan and I’m a big fan of Phil Ochs. At the time, that was sort of an anachronism because that sort of thing was not particularly popular when I was in college.

FAF: We’re talking about what years?

CHRIS: We’re talking about the late 80s. And I was a writer. I wrote some plays and things. I was no musician, but I loved Folk music. So I went out on the streets and I was doing monologues on street corners with a cigar box. And people looked at me like I was crazy. This was well before cell phones. These days, if you see somebody flailing his arms around, you think he’s talking on the phone. And you might actually be mildly envious that the homeless guy has a better Bluetooth, or a smaller Bluetooth device, than you do.

FAF: Did you have a favorite street corner?

CHRIS: That was in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. I used to do it in shopping mall parking lots. There was a lot of foot traffic there, because there was no downtown foot traffic in Winston-Salem where I was going to school. And eventually I discovered that, if I went and got a guitar—and I didn’t even play the guitar, I just sort of held it and muted the strings and strummed on it while I did these monologues—then, that made me a folksinger. And, since I loved Folk music anyway, I did start writing some songs, and took off when I graduated college in 1988 as a street musician. And I still consider myself on my summer away from college.

FAF: What is your schedule like? What do you try to strive for and what are your goals for what you are presenting to the people?

CHRIS: I have been doing as many as 300 shows a year since 1988. This year I’ve done fewer than any other year, probably somewhere around 100-150, which I have been intentionally trying to slow down touring. I plan to continue doing this show, something similar to what you saw last year onstage, throughout this current festival season and next festival season.

The reason why I have been doing fewer shows is because I have been working on a play that I want to start presenting after festival season of 2009. It is a one-man show that takes place in Texas, which is why I’m down here. I would love to say that I came just to be at the Kerrville Folk Festival, but I came down to work on the play. The scenery in the play is going to be video, and it takes place on the open road. So I have been, for the past week, driving around back roads in West Texas and filming them from the back of a pickup truck for the scenery for this play. I plan to start trying to present that in theaters instead of music venues.

FAF: So that will change your life.

CHRIS: I think so. I would like to. I think 20 years is a long time and is a long enough time to do any one thing. If I continue on, I don’t think things would change all that much and I would like for them to change because I don’t make really any money and it was easy to live hand-to-mouth when I was in my twenties and now I’m in my forties and it’s a little harder.

So I’m trying to find a way that I can stay on the road and go to a city and perform in that city for two weeks. And then go home afterwards. I have not had a home for 20 years. I’ve basically been homeless for 20 years and I would like that to change. I think this play would be a good way to do it. I even enjoy doing the show I’m currently doing a great deal, but I think it’s time to set it down. That’s part of the reason for releasing this boxed set: it’s my way of saying, of letting those go.

FAF: Well, some of us will be very sorry that you’re letting that go.

CHRIS: But I will have a new show and, you know, with a show like this, it needs to be new and fresh. And, it does change from year to year, don’t get me wrong. It changes dramatically.

FAF: And will it be issue-driven like the work you’re doing now?

CHRIS: I don’t know that it’s all that issue driven. Now, the first term of George the Second, I did probably 300 shows a year doing mostly George Bush jokes, mostly current, up-to-the-minute politics. And I think during the first Bush administration, George Sr.’s administration, I did mostly that and somewhat during Reagan. And I liked that, but there’s so many people out there writing really great political satire—the Jon Stewarts of the world—and you know, they’ve got that stuff covered.

There are so many other subjects that I would like to cover. They’re issue-driven in a sense but more macrocosmically not very issue specific. I’ve not written the song for Obama taking the nomination yesterday which, at various points in my career, I would have had that song and been playing it out that night. And I spent a lot of time writing about issues. That dates very quickly and I think there’s some other things to write about. So yes, it’s political and sociological, but it’s not about the issue du jour.

FAF: So this is also material that will not be moldy within 45 days.

CHRIS: Exactly. And, the show that I did last year, I really tried to make it a non-political show. I did a piece about New Orleans, not about the political crisis, but about the human suffering in the city. And I think I closed the set with a piece talking about the anti-war movement; but actually, talking about the anti-war movement as a demographic. I wasn’t banging my fist against the wall against the war. It was more about the numbers of people that are out there, and the lack of protest songs, and more of a social study than a political diatribe—I thought, anyway.

FAF: That is one reason why it was a favorite of mine: there’s so many issues, so much going on, where is the outrage, by the way?

CHRIS: And I thought that, by saying, “Where is the outrage?” it’s not saying, “I’m outraged.” And I don’t know that I am. Yeah, I guess I am, until I die. But I certainly think that there were a lot harder-hitting political songs on the stage throughout the Festival than anything that I was doing in that particular show.

FAF: You think so?

CHRIS: Yes. I mean, Susan Werner’s set was just over the top. It was great, I loved it. And I’m glad to see that was happening, and to see the response of the audience to it.

FAF: Well, some of us wish there were a whole lot more.

CHRIS: Oh, I do too. But by festival standards, I thought they were all very political last year. It made me look like a political lightweight, I thought, for what I actually put on the stage. And I was careful to do that, because I’ve had complaints about my material being too political in the past, at this festival. So I was cognizant of that.

I wanted to put something on the stage that will reach people. My goal is to reach people. Slamming your fist against the wall is not necessarily reaching people.

FAF: So are you saying you are going to settle down?

CHRIS: Um, no, because I was never wound up. [Lots of laughter.] You may see me as wound up, but I don’t!!

FAF: You know what I mean. Are you actually going to get a ‘home’?

CHRIS: Maybe an apartment. Yes, yes, I’m going to play fewer shows in 2009. I would be content going to four or five cities the entire year and playing for two weeks each. That would be awesome. And maybe write a play for next season, and do the same sort of thing.

FAF: Your major in college—of course, you said you graduated as a street musician—was your major actually drama or theater arts?

CHRIS: I studied stage lighting design. I was going to be a lighting designer. I was traveling around the country, auditioning for theaters to be a lighting designer, and I was paying for my trip by being a street musician. And I actually landed a job as an assistant lighting designer on Broadway, and I turned it down because I was having so much fun playing the subways of New York. And I haven’t done much lighting design since.

But I do enjoy directing...and I’ve been making a lot of films as part of the [current] show...I do a multimedia presentation.

FAF: Thank you very much Chris.

CHRIS: Thanks for asking me.

FAF: I hope to see more of you.

CHRIS: Thank you so much for the hard work that you’re doing on your important website.

FAF: Thank you very much, but you haven’t seen it yet...do you have a website Chris?

CHRIS: I do. It’s ChrisChandler.org. I’m an ORGanizer, not a COMmunist.

Joy H. Hance