CHRIS WHITLEY 1960-2005

I just learned a few hours ago that my life long (life after 17) songwriting hero, Chris Whitley, died of lung cancer on Sunday, (nov 20th) at the age of 45. It was not a shock … but is slowly becoming one as I sit listening to his music. He was diagnosed with lung cancer 5 weeks ago and now, just a month later, he is gone.

I would like to say we have lost one of the greatest, imaginative songwriters of our generation… But I question my bias, Knowing that my relationship with his music is too close to judge in terms of his universal worth to a generation. Easily, I could say, not one person, beside my circle of musician friends, had heard of him when I brought him up in conversation – and most of them didn’t care for Chris, beyond his first album “living with the law”. Even my most trusted and like-minded band mate, Aaron Thomas, had a hard time digesting his music back in the day. But after much laborious proselytizing, (he would totally deny this) I convinced him of Whitley’s pure genius in the CD “Terra Incognita”. Now that CD would be named among Aaron’s top 5 of all time.

At his shows, there where some hard core fans, like me, that loved and/or deeply appreciated everything he released, but I would say for the most part, from conversations before and after the performance, that the majority of the people where still hanging on to him because of his first CD. They would suffer the rest of the tunes to hear one or two songs from Living with The law, or “Dirt Floor” (in the same spirit of living with law). This saddened me… in fact; I would characterize all of my experiences at his shows as sad times. Whether it was the show in Austin SXSW where he could barley pluck the strings because he was so blasted… or the Gypsy Tea room show, where I thought his skeletal white pasty body might collapse under the weight of his worn steel guitar. I sometimes found myself thinking he was killing himself, not with the drugs, but with his music.

My affection for Whitley’s music is hard for me to describe or find the root of. There is a time in a person’s life, when they are young, when the necessary walls and barriers of the spirit have not been constructed, when there is still a naive hope and curiosity in this ever elusive life. This is when Whitley’s music attached itself to my conscious and has held on every sense, like no other artist could. It is not possible for me now, to love a music or artist in such a way, because that small break in the clouds of my life is closed… it was only open for that moment in time and never can open in the same way. There where two artist that made it in, Daniel Lanois and Whitley. I don’t, and can’t see music in such a lovely innocence anymore.

When I listen now, I see little blinking lights and faders… stereo images, running tape, tracks and mic placement. Kind of like OZ, once you peek behind the curtain, you can never see the world the same way. But to those few artist that are attached to my time of innocence, I still see and hear them with the magic of the cloaked world. This is why Chris is so important to my music-life and life-life. He is a rope that I can hold on to, that extends to all the events of my young life, a guide, like they would do up north between houses so you could find your way during a blizzard. I can follow his music through the blinding storm, to the safe warm fire of memories… some sad, some happy, some hurtful and dreaded – but all defining.

The first time I listened to his music I was 17, living in a horse feed room next to a pony named Trigger. It was his first album “living with the law’, on a tape that had been dubbed at least 20 times and ran slower than the actual recording. (I didn’t know this until years later when I finally bought the CD, and found to my disappointment that I had been listing to him for years at the wrong speed… It took a long time to get used to) I would lay in the shed with my friends all around listing to the tape for hours upon hours. Silent, we listened in awe to the acrobatic vocals performing amazing feats of agility and sadness. I knew every breath of every song every squeak of guitar string and creek of a chair hidden in the lush production. These where the most happy satisfied times of my life, I realized many years later.

Though I loved his music and lived on it, I don’t think that I was much influenced by it in my own music (technically), if that is possible. I’ve never heard any resemblance to it at least. I think this was because his music was sacred to me, I could not listen to it with the technical ear of form and harmony, I listened to him with my soul and spirit. his sound seemed off limits to me, and too worthy for the musical junkyard of parts I pull from.

Goodbye Chris,
God bless the family he left behind.

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