Authors: John Popper
Apparently Chris was really great at misbehavior followed by reconciliation. I attribute this to Chris's incredible survival instincts and his knack for breaking rules, whether they be hat or tie.
The New School offered me a perfect place to go and hide when I was out of money. But once we were able to pay our rent from our gig money, I called my parents and said, “I love you and I want to thank you for the opportunity and I'm quitting school.”
I walked in that day, and the question the school had for me was, “Are you learning more out there or in here?” And that was the last question I needed to answer. Clearly I was learning more out there. It
was what I wanted to do, it was why I was going to music school, and I was able to live off that, so it could be my job. I think the school's attitude was as long as I wasn't quitting school to be a taxi driver, that they didn't need to teach me, I could go off and make a living.
My parents, of course, freaked out. They told me not to do anything until they called the school. I don't know who spoke with themâit was probably Arnie Lawrenceâbut then they called me back and said, “We'll support you in whatever you need to do.” They said I convinced them when I said, “I'll never forgive myself if I don't try.” But after they called the school, they were much calmer. I don't know who spoke with them, but I think they told my parents that “This is what a musician's supposed to do, and he's doing it.” I think that in a situation like this it's clear to everybody except your parents.
I remember when the Spin Doctors got their gold record. I was so envious because I wanted to show my parents a gold recordâin our line of work it's the only official vindication you get from a certified agency that says, “Yes, these guys know what they're doing.” Until then your parents wonder,
How is he going to make a living? Is he going to sell enough records? Is he going to have enough gigs?
And the first real accreditation you get when you go off with your band and play is a statement of record sales. And when we got our first gold record, I sent one right away to my parents.
It took a while for my parents to appreciate that the music scene operates under an altogether different set of rules from what they were used to. Chico Hamilton at the New School once said about me: “This cat, the groove always ends up landing in his pocket.” But then he looked me in the eyes and added, “You are one of those guys who's always late and will always be late.”
I think I've proven him right on both counts. I remember there was some show I was supposed to do at the New School. My parents came in for it and I was late. The gig was starting already, and I had this sack of laundry I had done in New Jersey. I showed up right in time for my solo, and Arnie Lawrence's take was, “Yup, right on time.” My parents told me afterward that they would have killed me but that Arnie's position was that I was right on time. I put my laundry down, played the show, picked up my laundry, and left. When you pull that
off and everybody's so happy to see you, all is forgiven. And I've learned to live life being forgiven.
A few years later there was one night in Providence when I miscalculated the drive from Quakertown, so the guys had to go on stage and explain that I wasn't there yet but that we'd start as soon I arrived. I should mention that I was about two and a half hours late. I thought it was four hours from Quakertown to Providence, but it was six. I had forgotten that you have to drive the whole length of Connecticut. I thought, “I'll just swing by!” Nope. The audience booed them and they had never been booed before, so when I finally showed up, they were pretty pissed off.
I've been late a handful of times, but generally I show up at the last minute. My attitude is to simply just wake up and play, and that sometimes gets me into trouble.
After I left the New School I'd continue to play with a lot of the same guys. In the early nineties we had this group called Wasabi with Arnie Lawrence and members of Blues Traveler, Spin Doctors, this great band called The Authority, and whoever was around. The whole point of it was not to rehearse. It was an improvising band, and we knew to stretch out a jam for fifteen hours on the key of E because we had mastered the dark arts.
By the spring of 1987 we were officially Blues Traveler with Bobby in the band. We'd play keg parties all around Jersey whenever I'd come home, and it was very clear that the plan was for everybody to move to New York the following year.
After high school all of our parents said we'd have to get jobs or go to college. I remember my father sat me down in our living room and said, “Son, do you see all this? It's mine.” His point was that I needed to find a job or go to school. We all had similar situations in which our parents were willing to pay for college. So we decided to use that time to blow off school while we figured out how to get the band working. We had four years to make it happen. There was a ticking clock.
Chan's father was a psychology professor at Princeton and helped get him into NYU, so Chan would have some excuse to be in New York. Brendan got into Rutgers, and they had some sort of New York program; he also was accepted into the New School on some level. Bobby enrolled at Long Island University, the Brooklyn campus. Chan called it LI-No because he never showed up there. But because the New School had amps and gear and practice rooms, that was where we basically went to go rehearse, and we'd rehearse all the time. Once we'd get gigs it was a beautiful balance of Nightingale's teaching us
how to sell beer and get people dancing and then the New School showing us the finer attributes of the dark arts of harmonies.
We had this death-or-victory tribal mentality. It was a reckless thing we were trying to do, but we were reacting like it was normal. The New School helped make it normal because we went to a college to learn how to go out and take huge risks, but they don't tell you about thatâwhen they were talking about risks they were talking more about the aesthetics.
There was a long dry spell of actual gigs. Every week we would go to the open-mic night at Abilene's and do it as a band. Eventually they gave us a gig.
I remember I was on cloud nine because we had been doing these open-mic nights forever. I felt like,
I'm the King of New York
â
I finally work here!
But then I made the mistake of walking down the wrong street on my way back to the Y. There was this crazy gang of kids who had these boxes of crescent rollsâmaybe they'd knocked over a deliâand they were whipping them at everything and knocking out street-lights. I was already committed to walking down the block and figured that if I ran, they'd chase me. One of them called out, “Hey man, don't he look like Benny Hill?” I laughed, and they threw a box of crescent rolls in front of me. Then they started winging them at me, and I walked away with baked goods flying at my head. That took me down a peg or two. I didn't feel like I was the king of New York so much as I just worked there.
As it turned out, I didn't even work there very long, at least not right away. When we finally played at Abilene's, it ended up being somewhat anticlimactic because they never had us back. The lady who owned it was a big Elvis Presley fan and couldn't stand the way we did “Hound Dog.” So after playing our funk version of “Hound Dog,” we were done at Abilene's.
Then we tried playing an open-mic night at Dan Lynch on 2nd Avenue near 13th Street and were kicked out. The amps were at ten and we played “Slow Change,” which has a 7/4 part. They were hosting a traditional blues jam, as they did every Sunday, and they stopped us because of the time signatureâ“You guys can just leave.” We didn't
know what had happened. We didn't realize you could get kicked out of an open-mic jam session.
So we walked out and right next door to Dan Lynch was Nightingale's, where Joan had first brought me after an Ain't Mozart rehearsal. We went in there, and that's where we started hanging out. Nightingale's never turned us away and never minded what we played because they weren't about “traditional blues.” Jono Manson, who led the house band and was the king daddy, took us under his wing and taught us how to work a bar.
Tom Hosier was the manager at Nightingale's. He was awesome to us as well. The fact that Tom liked us ran counter to everything he liked in music. He couldn't stand jam bands, and he couldn't stand loud bands or psychedelic bands. But we were the exception to that rule. Tom always seemed like he was in an annoyed mood, but that just added to the ambience of Nightingale's.
I was a wide-eyed kid, and I remember asking him about Wood-stock because he had told me he'd been there as a teenager. In the eighties being at Woodstock was this huge badge of honor, and I wanted to know what it was like.
He told me, “It rained for three days and we were living in our own filth. You want to know what it was like? Jimi Hendrix played and I didn't even care.”
I remember Tom made me a bouncer one night because I needed the fifty bucks. Matt Dillon came to the door and it was five dollars to get in. He ponied up the five dollars for himself and then came back to me, “Listen I'm with some friends and I was wondering . . .”
I said, “Look, you're Matt Dillon. You can get them in if you want to. Just ask.”
So he did. “Can you get my friends in?”
I said, “Sure, you're Matt Dillon . . .” I just kept saying “Matt Dillon” over and over. I let all his friends in, and does he call? No . . .
Many years later we were at a table read for the
Simpsons.
I believe they were considering having us on the show, but it didn't happen. The actors all play multiple roles, and because Harry Shearer is both Mr. Burns and Smithers, it was surreal watching him argue with himself. While we were there, though, I spoke with Hank Azaria, who
apparently had been a Nightingale's regular and a big fan of Blues Traveler during that era.
Before that point most of our gigs had been New Jersey keg parties. But we had to leave Jersey because the cops could tell when we were warming up that there would soon be underage drinking going on.
Some of our New York City friends tried to help us by throwing parties and hosting gigs in nontraditional places. We tried it at a performance space on 18th Street, and there was also a night when we came up to the roof of somebody's brownstone in midtown Manhattan. It was a gorgeous evening, and we were told we could play there all night. People brought kegs and lots of weed and LSD. We were about to start, everyone was tripping, and then Chan broke a string. Do you know what it's like restringing your guitar when you're really tripping your face off? There's no way to understand what “in tune” means.
There were two hundred people on this rooftop waiting for Chan to tune the string, and they were really starting to get into the tuning process as a song in its own right. Eventually he did it, and when we finally played our first song, there was this amazing release of energy. But then an old lady came out and said, “You've got to stop. It's too lateâyou can't make any more noise.” She shut the whole thing down.
So there we were, two hundred of us on a rooftop, tripping balls and with nothing to do. As I remember, a keg got thrown off the roof and landed on somebody's Volkswagen Rabbit. This was when our old friends were coming in from New Jersey and merging with our new friends from college. It was an attempt on our part to try to get something going before we could land legitimate gigs.
But then starting with Monday night at Nightingale's, we began to build our scene in New York. The way we brought people in was by handing out fliers that promised free nitrous, mushroom tea, and joints. What gave us an edge was that we knew a lot of people who were young and new to the city, just like us. They came to see us because even though we were still roughâthere was an energy to what we were doing. So Monday at Nightingale's quickly became a mob scene where everyone was stoned to the gills.
This was the era just after the repeal of New York's cabaret laws. Before that time in New York, if you did not have a cabaret license,
you were not allowed to have more than three musicians on stage at your place. The bass player usually had a long table and would sit at the barâsometimes he'd be in a closet. So Jono had two bands: Joey Miserable and the Worms, which was a great band with horns, and a trio version called the Sweetones.
When we got there, they had just repealed the law, and it helped us immensely because there was a lot of work for bands. Eventually we would play five or six nights a week, all over the city.
I had the knowledge to lead and Bobby had the balls to lead. He was fearless. He would get to know a scene quickly, and soon he would be running it. Chan was this sexpot who was ready to take it all on, and Brendan was the quiet one. I was the weird one, but when I stuck with Bobby I felt fearless. I was more theoretical, saying, “We could do this . . .” and then he'd be like, “Fuck it, man, we're gonna do two of those. Stop thinking small.”
I was going to the New School and learning about the aesthetics of music and philosophy from these jazz legends, and then at night I'd play with Jono and learn how to sell drinks and get people dancing. Together, those two schools helped develop the way we played as musicians. Once you learn an art form and how to go out and peddle that art form, it never lets you down, much like a magical power.
I can remember watching the Worms with Jono, and it seemed like the whole floor was made of rubber. Everybody was just bouncing up and down. Then when the song stops, you have a few seconds and want to keep the momentum, but you want to pace it and do it right where everyone's happy and getting the right kind of hammered and having fun. You learn these things through experience. It's the right balance; and it's sort of like hosting a party. And if you do it right, the crowd gives you the energy back, so your energy and their energy augment, where one plus one equals three and it keeps reverberating back and forth. We drive them and they drive us, which pushes them, which pushes us, and it's sort of like a combustion engine. If you have all the balances of the combustibles right, it lasts for a long time as long as you don't flood your engine.
The goal is to make what Miles Davis called social music. Bill Graham called it pelvic musicâmusic you can move your pelvis to. It's social interaction music; it's music people live their lives to. Bebop was
a great social music because when you went to a club to hear Dizzie play, you were slowly sipping your gin and tonics with your girlfriend and it got you into the mood and into the moment and you were a part of it. You were participating just by being there, and that to me is my favorite kind of music.
There's such a beautiful mishmash of American culture that happens in a bar, in real time, in real music. Suddenly nobody's white, nobody's blackâwe're all just here, and that is a great feeling. I think music can do that when it's allowed to.
Most places where bands play also sell alcohol, and as people start drinking, they get a little looser and want to dance. If they're too stiff, they don't quite want to make fools of themselves, which is what they're supposed to do. And what you learn very early on is that the people paying you to play there want you to sell booze, which actually helps your show and makes it more fun for everyone. I always say we work 'em from the front and the bartenders work 'em from the back.
Jono and a couple of the older guys explained that if the bar has a good night, they'll hire you back, and if the crowd you draw doesn't tip so well, they won't. It's important to remind people to tip their bartenders; to this day I always mention that. You should make friends with the bartendersâthey are your pals.
The lessons of the New School and their artistic applications made for a great combination with the practical realities we learned while having actual gigs at Nightingale's. If you combine the two, then you've got something special. If you just play dance music, then you might as well play covers, and if you just play super-ethereal, aesthetic, virtuoso music, you're going to bore the shit out of everybody. It's gotta be some kind of balance, where people's feet are moving so they subconsciously respond, and then they're free to get into it on a conscious level.
Jono taught me how to read a crowd. You can't ask everybody how they're doingâthere's that great scene in
Buckaroo Banzai
when he says, “Wait a minute, somebody's not having a good time.” It would be great if I could stop and focus in on everybody's problems, but over time you get good at reading the rumble of the room. We started as a family and we remained a family, and that was also an advantageâwe truly could rely on each other in way that was instinctual. When you
join a band with other people, they have to think about their interests and you have to think about yours, but we were literally living in the same house. That was a huge advantage when it came to decision making because our interests were aligned.
The first apartment we moved into together as a band was 354 Bergen Street in Brooklyn. We lived there from the early summer of 1988 through 1989. It still says Blues Traveler on the sidewalk where Chan and Brendan wrote it in the cement. We were on the top floor and had a beautiful viewâwe could see the Twin Towers. We were just a train ride away from lower Manhattan, and the neighborhood wasn't as dire as our next apartment, where people were smoking crack in the hallways and vestibule. This was an alcohol neighborhood turning into a heroin neighborhood, and the good thing about alcoholics and heroin addicts is that they're slower and in many ways harmless, whereas the crack guys hit you and run before you even see them.
In our crack neighborhood we would pack our van trailer after doing a gig, and if we didn't park it in some place that was absolutely secure, people would come and unscrew all the sheet metal from the trailer. Then we'd come outside and find some wheels and screws on the ground. You know it's a crazy neighborhood when they're stealing the steel from your trailer.
The other problem with living in a crack neighborhood was that the guys had to try the crack because they'd done all the drugs in Princeton. Crack had been demonized in our suburban mindset, but Chan and Bob seemed pretty fearless about jumping in and trying it. There was a brief point when I went right there with them.