What if that was no longer the condition under which artists must work? Chris is a testament that the artist need not sacrifice everything to express himself. A confident, intelligent and handsome man, he has used the tools available to him to create a balance that allows him to choose how he expresses himself to society without compromise.

I met with Chris in his apartment, a cramped room packed with electronic sound equipment.

PRSB: Is it true that musicians get all the girls?

Chris: (Laughs) No, actually quite the opposite, most women are either taught or conditioned by experience not to date musicians.

PRSB: Do you have a personal experience with that?

Chris: Yeah, throughout my life (laughs). Women think the whole idea of dating a musician is cool and everything but it's not. There's a lot more to it than they think. A friend of mine who recently married a musician said it takes a very certain special kind of woman to be with a musician.

PRSB: What are some of the things that they have to worry about?

Chris: They can't be insecure; they have to be self sufficient in a lot of ways because he may not be there when they need something. I think women who are not self sufficient tend to have problems with that.

PRSB: You've been trying to get into the music business for a while, given that you said that it takes a certain type woman to be with a man who is a musician, why do you want to be a musician, what are some of the things that are attracting you to this?

[Click the picture to go to YouTube and see Chris singing "Crazy Love"]

Chris: It's not really something that attracts me to it, it is just something I am. I don't do this full time, and haven't done it full time for several years. I don't care what I end up doing for a job, the music is my work. A job is just what I do to get money. I'm always going to do music. No matter what happens I'm still going to be doing this. It's not a hobby, I just don't know how to not do it.

PRSB: Would you call it a compulsion?

Chris: At times.

PRSB: Describe the push that draws you toward writing a song.

Chris: Different things, sometimes it's an idea or a situation I experience in life, a situation I see someone else experience in their life; a story in the paper or something I see on the news. Sometimes it's just a melody that pops in my head while I'm brushing my teeth. There's no one way that it happens. The only thing there is to learn is to be open and be able to hear it when it comes. That takes some practice and work in terms of just letting myself go with those moments when they happen, as opposed to trying to judge the idea before I've even fully had it. Like having a couple of words come to me and I catch myself saying too soon, "Ah that's no good." Well, how do I know that for sure? It just popped into my head, I haven't really thought about it yet. For me, part of it is learning not to start to editorialize too soon.

PRSB: Would you say it is a form of personal expression?

Chris: Yes, definitely, it's not so hard to write about things I have experienced but I can't write about things that I can't at least relate to. Some things I've written about that I haven't actually experienced but it's a situation that I can relate to. As long as I can relate to it then it is absolutely a form of expression. It is one of the more primitive forms of expression, one of the oldest among mankind.

PRSB: You said you'd taken a job and that the job is just a form of money but you also mentioned that you had been a musician full time, were you writing songs or working in a band?

Chris: I was in a band we did some original material, some covers, a lot of 70's funk covers, James Brown, Cool and the Gang, stuff like that. Most of the original material, most of my writing was confined to writing lyrics which is an art unto itself that I haven't quite mastered. I didn't write much of the music though. So I've spent the last few years learning music and learning to write and interpret the melodic ideas that I have and bringing that back to the structure of the lyrics; interpreting that into guitar and bass lines and learning to play all of that.

PRSB: Describe that period of your life when you were working full time as a musician.

Chris: It was very much the stereotype, very transient; for six months I didn't have an apartment. I lived out of my car, hotel rooms and from the back of a tour bus. It's a liberating lifestyle but it is easy to become disconnected to everything because you're never in one place for too long. You're seeing the world but your world becomes only the three or four other people you're traveling with because they are the only constants in that life.

PRSB: Where did you travel?

Chris: The southeast mainly, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Virginia, Alabama, what they used to call the Chitlin Circuit. It was interesting.

PRSB: What is the Chitlin Circuit?

Chris: The Chitlin Circuit was a term that they referred to in the earlier days of the music industry and during segregation. If you were a black artist in those days there were a lot of venues you couldn't play. The venues you could play were in the southeast. So when a black artist, especially one just starting out, went on tour they would play primarily in the southeast. Segregation was strongest there so there were more black owned venues that allowed black performers. That's how it got the name. So that's what we did. We played more of the college venues on the circuit.

PRSB: So for a young black performer trying to make a name for himself, is it obligatory to go on the circuit?

Chris: Obligatory…, not so much now a days but before it was, certainly, long before my time. I think it's not obligatory now because there's so much more technology that enables artists to get their music out there and heard by so many more people across a wider geographic area without a big expenditure of money.

Although it's not obligatory, it is something that a lot of artists would benefit from because it is not an easy thing to do and you learn if you're really cut out for this and if you really love the lifestyle enough to pursue further. It is definitely one of the things a lot of artists could benefit from experiencing; that constant schedule, every night a new city, a new venue, a new crowd. A lot of the times you're doing the same songs and that's a challenge too, not letting it get stale for you because the audience can pick up on that instantly. They know when you're just walking through it, when you're just phoning it in and they don't appreciate that.

PRSB: So is Chris cut out for it?

Chris: Chris is more cut out for it now than then, just in terms of preparedness mentally and I'm a more skilled musician in general so if put in that situation again I think I could make more of it than before.

PRSB: Is that why you backed away when you did?

Chris: For a while, but part of it was that I wanted to take some time and become a better musician. When I started out, I was just a singer; I didn't know how to play any instruments. When I was in that band, one of the things that I was often frustrated with was the gap between vocalists and instrumentalists. In being able to interpret each other's ideas and share a common vocabulary. That was something that was a real challenge for me. I didn't want to be someone who just sings and doesn't know music and can't have a dialogue with a guitar player or with a bassist. Whereas the typical singer just knows how to make the right sounds come out of their mouth, they don't really know much else beyond that. That can be an obstacle in being able to work with other musicians. I think everyone who sings should at least learn the basics of piano or keyboard for that reason.

When I go into a studio as a singer and I meet a bunch of instrumentalists for the first time that I'll be working with, if I didn't know those basic structures and music theory then I'm going to have a very long night. I've done this; spend half an hour trying to get the keyboard player to play the right chord that I'm hearing in my head because I didn't know what it's called. I didn't know that vocabulary so we're doing it by trial and error. It is time consuming, it drains everyone and people get frustrated. That's one of the things that has always contributed to the disdain that instrumentalist seem to have for vocalists because you can't learn to play the guitar without learning music theory, you can't learn to play any instrument without learning some music theory. Yet people can have careers singing their whole lives and never learn to read music. Aretha Franklin just went back to school a couple years ago and how long has she been around, what kind of career has she had? She didn't read music and she went back and enrolled at Julliard to get that grounding. Even at the stage at which her career is at she saw the need for it.

PRSB: Now you're in New York, and you have a job and you're an accomplished musician; you've learned the theory. How difficult is it to work full time and keep your music motivation?

Chris: It's not that hard, it is just something I do. There are some days that are rougher than others and when I come home I'm too tired and I just want to lie down and go to sleep but for the most part those days are few and far between. There are not too many instances where something from work will take away my desire to come home and work on music in the evening. Luckily I have a job that is fairly low stress and doesn't require a lot of late hours or overtime. When 5:01 hits, my brain switches from work to music. You have to compartmentalize, you really do.

PRSB: When do you think you would know when to drop the job and pick up music again full time; or will that time ever happen?

Chris: I think it will, I'm not holding my breath for it but I think it will happen. If I can get to a point where I'm making equal or greater income doing music than I am from my job then, yeah I'll quit my job. But until then, I'll continue as is. The way I pursue it, I am self contained. I have all my recording equipment at home. I have the instruments, I know how to play them and just about any sound I can think of that I want to hear, I know how to get that sound out of an instrument. I'm not confined to booking studio time and having to keep a schedule or having to sit around and depend on other musicians to show up. I have a lot more flexibility. I've designed it to have a lot more flexibility so I can balance the two together better, during the time that I need to do keep the balance.

PRSB: Recently a young musician in Paris recorded a top hit in her apartment using a similar set up to what you have here. Are recording studios obsolete?

Chris: They're not obsolete; it depends a lot on what you're recording. If you're recording a symphony orchestra, you'd probably want those people going to a recording studio than coming to my apartment. For the typical singer, songwriter, solo artist; a voice and maybe one or two instruments it is fine. It is a larger outlay of cash in the beginning to invest in all the equipment but once you've purchased the equipment, in the long run it is so much more cost effective to set up a home studio; partly because everything is so cheap now and of such good quality. I don't think the brick and mortar studio is obsolete but I do think it is not as necessary anymore. Musically there are some situations where if I had a live band of ten instruments I wouldn't necessarily want to bother trying to record that on a Mac with a four channel mixer. If it is just me and I want to record a version of a song I just wrote and put some drums, a keyboard and a bass line on it, why book studio time at $25 to $100 an hour. Plus I'd be at the mercy of someone else. Sound engineers, it is their job, but they can change the whole sound of a song. Sometimes they can make it closer to what you had in your head and sometimes they take it in a completely different direction. That added layer of communication from the artist to the engineer and the engineer to the sound board is another juncture and opportunity for things to get changed away from the artist's original vision. I'm not saying that those changes are always a bad thing but it's good to have the option of having control of my own vision.

PRSB: What do you think is the future of music in the digital age? iTunes is the top music retailer, now RIAA is becoming very persistent in their cases and every band in suburbia has a website.

Chris: I think that as a whole the music industry didn't a very good job of capitalizing on the changes. There were a lot of opportunities but they chose to see them as threats; for example, the whole Napster thing. I think that the record label is no longer as viable an option for an up and coming artist who is willing to invest a little money in equipment and the time in learning how to use it. You can get your music out to just as many people if not more than a traditional label can. It takes little bit more work and doing a lot of things yourself that would have fallen to the label. You have to be more than just as artist; you have to be an artist, a producer, an engineer, a marketing person. You have to wear a lot more hats. Maybe you'd sell ten thousand copies of a song online, whereas with the budget and the manpower of a traditional label you'd sell a hundred thousand copies. Like the model that MC Hammer set when he first came on the scene. He had already produced and released three albums selling them out of the trunk of his car before he ever signed a major label deal and when the labels did come to him with an offer of a contract, he laughed in their faces; saying why would I sign a deal with you only making 10% off the sales of a hundred thousand copies when I sell ten thousand on my own and I keep all the money? If the major label route is where an artist is looking to go, self producing your own albums can be a bargaining tool to already have material out and be an established selling artist before you ever sit down at the table with a label rep. You have the advantage of going into the negotiation with a proven track record. It's entirely different to go into a contract negotiation with a following already and a couple of regional hits where you've already sold eight, ten or fifteen thousand copies of your album or single. You can point to the sales and say, although I'm not national or international or billboard top ten; I am selling recording artist. It is added security and comfort to be able to walk away from the label's deal if you don't like it. Just like what Hammer said, because he knew he could sell records on his own and didn't need the label.

PRSB: You've recently joined BMI and started copyrighting your songs, is that an early indication that you are close to going to the market?

Chris: That is the direction I'm heading toward. My time table is a little foggy right now but that is definitely the direction I'm heading in right now.

PRSB: Is getting into the top ten through a record label is less of a touchstone for success?

Chris: For me, in my personal definition of success, yes. I'm at a point in my life and in my growth as a musician that I don't care about the idea of having the heavy rotation video from MTV or the mega-million dollar recording contract. You know, people don't realize this when they talk about how much money they got in their advance and how much money is spent promoting their album; the artist actually pays for all that. When the record hits the shelves and people start buying it, the sixteen or twenty dollars that consumer pay for the CD; the artist doesn't see a penny of that until the label has been reimbursed for all the money they spent on promotion, studio time, producers, and distribution. It is not the way that a lot of people think it is. Thinking the label is just being charitable and they are going to sink all this money into you just because they believe in you. No, they sink the money into you because they plan to get it back and they are going to get their money back before you earn a penny.

PRSB: If the artist can replicate what the record label is doing, then all the label brings to the table is power of marketing?

Chris: Right and a distribution network but again with the internet and downloading there's a whole separate distribution channel that the label hasn't really mastered and hasn't tapped into it yet. That's ok, because the artist can tap into it himself directly at one tenth, or even less, one fiftieth, the cost of what the label spends on their marketing and distribution costs.

PRSB: Let me change the tack here a little, do you come from a musical family?

Chris: Not at all, pretty much just me. I don't know where it came from, nobody really knows where it came from, it just happened.

PRSB: What's your earliest memory where someone said you had talent?

Chris: Riding home from school one day and I was sitting in the back seat and there was a song on the radio that I was singing along with and I heard one of my sister's friends whisper "Wow, that kid can really sing". I knew that I liked to sing but that was the first introduction of the concept that someone else might like to hear me sing.

PRSB: How old where you?

Chris: I was maybe seven or eight.

PRSB: From there did you go to church choir? That seems a typical path.

Chris: It is but I never did that. It wasn't until high school that I starting doing things, that's when I joined the choir and started taking music classes at school. There wasn't such a great music program at the middle school that I went to and elementary school is not really structured for that.

My parents gave me piano lessons for a while, when I was eight or nine for about six months but my parents quit paying for it because I wouldn't practice. I think the main reason I wouldn't practice is because I didn't want to play the piano. I always wanted to play the guitar so I asked for a guitar and got a piano and then they wonder why I didn't practice. (Laughs)

It's part of what took me so long to develop as a musician because I didn't have a lot of influence at home. It's not that my family wasn't supportive, it was just that they knew nothing of what I was trying to do so they didn't have a lot of advice or support that they could give me outside of "Ok, um… go do it" "Aight, thanks, I'll be back when I'm done" (Laughing).

It was never an issue or a matter of my family being unsupportive or opposed to it, just a question of them not having the knowledge or awareness of how to even do that. You can't advise someone of how to do something if you don't know how to do it. I was on my own as far as figuring everything out and what I needed to do and how to go about it. But like I always tell people, if you can read a book you can learn how to do just about anything.

PRSB: You're working on first solo album in order to have a product to sell, so that you can do this full time, is that right?

Chris: I'm working on the album and I don't even look at it as I'm producing a product to sell necessarily. I mean, I do intend to sell it once it's done (laughs), don't get me wrong but in the creative process, I don't even think about that. It's about trying to write the best song that I have in me and give the best recording of it that I can. If we want to look at it in terms of a product then my main concern is making the best product I can. Hopefully if I get that right, then selling it will be a helluva lot easier.

PRSB: Ok, last question then, classify your music.

Chris: I don't do that. I know it's going to have to be categorized eventually and that's why when I get a song close to where I want it to be I'll send it out to friends and get their opinions on it. I feel like, as an artist, it's not my job, my responsibility or my business to try to classify or categorize what I do; to me that's the listener's job. You tell me what kind of song it is. You tell me what kind of music it is. When I was writing it, all I was thinking of was making a good song. I wasn't thinking "I want to make a good rap song or I want to make a good folk song or R&B song. I just want to write and record the best song I have in me at that moment. I try to keep that as my focus.

Once the artist starts labeling their own music, that classification decision confines them to that category when it comes to the creative process; for example if they say, "Ok I'm a rap artist", that idea will influence and inform every song that they write. Even if it is on a sub-conscious level because they may have an idea for a song or something may come to them and the artist will edit it before it's time. Throwing it out because it is not hip-hop enough or it's not R&B enough. I don't think that's necessarily the most helpful thing as far as sustaining the creative process.

PRSB: We look forward to hearing your album.

Chris: Thank you.