Authentically Chris Whitley By: Mason MacDonald
At Khyber Pass PA in 1995, Chris Whitley got on stage to perform during his “Din of Ecstasy” tour. His body appeared almost gaunt and skeletal as if any moment his steel guitar could snap his bones collapsing him to the floor. He cursed through the cigarette in his mouth, expressing his displeasure at the fact his guitar kept drifting out of tune. After fixing the dissonant string he started playing “I forget you every day”, and the roar of his seemingly supercharged resonator filled the room. Four minutes and four seconds went by as the crowd stood there dead silent. Darkness filled the room except for a single beam of light illuminating the stage he stood on. No crazy light show or background dancers were required to bolster Chris’ side of the attentional transaction taking place within every audience member in attendance. He stood there steadfast until the words:
“Mama cried and daddy moaned, starvin’ in some trailer home, I want to burn it down, burn it where you lay”
The words erupted from him with a raspiness that eluded his voice previously. The emotion was evident as he then had to back away from the mic to regain his composure, before revving the aforementioned engine that was his electric resonator into a cacophony that at any moment felt as if it could burst your eardrums. If your eardrums survived you’d know that Chris could make that old beat-up national resonator sing, and Living with law showcases this effortlessly.
Living with the law was Chris’s debut album with Sony records. Before recording the album Chris spent his time busking on the streets of New York in the late 80s. It was during this time when he would catch his “big break” via Daniel Lanois. During this time Daniel was an in-demand producer, working with U2 on Joshua Tree as well as Bob Dylan, Peter Gabriel, and Willie Nelson. Daniel heard about Chris from a photographer who witnessed one of these performances. According to Daniel, he was so impressed with Chris’s sound that he invited him to stay at his home in New Orleans. It's here where the pair alongside Daniels' team of engineers Including Malcolm Burns would craft this record.
The record is littered with Burns’ signature style giving the album its almost dreamlike quality. Throughout the album, you can hear droning notes and echoes filling the space between Chris’s vocals and his guitar. These background elements may appear to be minor compared to the overall production, but they add so much to the identity of the album. Serving as an auditory film filter, Malcolm manages to conjure a sense of reverie that blends effortlessly into the genre of blues. It's the difference between looking at a clear 4k picture of a texas highway, or a grainy black-and-white photo of the same thing. The imperfections evoke a sense of nostalgia and times gone by, like a dream slowly losing clarity until all that's left is a vague impression. If fading memories had a soundtrack, they would be lulled into inexistence by droning echoes, patient percussion shuffles, and Chris’s National Resonator singing the somber melodies of Living with the law.
Lyrically Chris excels above the competition, Living with the law is poetry backed by music. The title track juxtaposes the complexities of life in the city compared to the country. The lyrics evoke scenes of a man trying to figure out life in a city without secrets, and streets riddled with crime. Chris creates such vague yet compelling imagery with the lines “ well I come down from the country, find a lesson in the draw… they got machines, mama I can’t figure…so fetch on up your greasy apron” Its a fish out of water story, evocative of Chris’s entry into the music scene at the time. He went from busking on the streets of New York into a large studio production. The next track, while not my favorite on the record, has immense sentimental value to me. I have vivid memories from my youth hearing Big Sky Country playing in my mom's Nissan minivan. Every time it came on I couldn't help but stare out the huge car window at the shrinking horizon from the ever-growing mountains coming into view. Funny enough it's the exact opposite sentiment of what the title suggests. The stand-out track lyrically is I Forget you every day, It's a haunting take on love. “ Remember when that house come down, and that dirty romance all around, I believe every word you say, but I forget you every day.” Chris gives us insight into a love unrequited, but from the perspective of the uninterested. He alludes that the trauma caused by his parents during his upbringing is the reason for his disinterest with lyrics like “Mama cried and daddy moaned, starvin’ in some trailer home, I want to burn it down, burn it where you lay” and “When I’m laying on top of that woman/ kind of thing, child, to make me crawl/ I mean skin and all.” The oxymoronic vagueness and specificity allow the audience to guess what the song means to Chris, but still know exactly what it means to them.
Even though the production adds much to the aesthetic of the record, Chris still shines on the stripped-down tracks. Phone Call From Leavenworth and Make the Dirt Stick, are the two tracks where the production falls out of view allowing for just Chris and his guitar to shine. Phone call from Leavenworth is a true rusty prison cell blues song. It's a story about the maddening that occurs within the Leavenworth prison cells as the world keeps revolving on the outside. With the focus on Chris’s vocals, you can hear all the mourning and regret in his voice each time his voice cracks. I wouldn't be surprised If instead of a studio Chris was recorded in secret after getting arrested from a drunken night in Leavenworth.
The remaining tracks such as Dust Radio, Bordertown, and Kick the Stones Exist as a hybrid between the other highly produced tracks with a surrealist quality to them, and the naked stripped-down tracks. Dust Radio in particular surprised me, it starts out as a poetic song driven primarily by Chris’s vocals and his National resonator. Only to be interrupted by a blazing electric guitar that seems to rip the steering wheel away from Chris. This electric eruption brings the song to an epic climax that immediately gave me goosebumps. All this building, only to dissolve into the cackling of a preacher giving his sermon through a dusty old radio.
This album was a musical awakening for me when I first heard it. At the time I was 18 and just listening to whatever Kid Cudi or Drake song happened to come on the radio. But the moment I heard Dust Radio I knew I not only needed an old dusty resonator, but that music can be more than catchy pop tunes that you listen to pass the time on your commute. Music all of a sudden could be poetry, philosophy, and more than just entertainment.
It’s hard not to be romantic about music, taking the stories surrounding albums and artists in just as much regard as the music. Hell, some of the stories surrounding albums have ascended into myth themselves. Just look at Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago where Justin Vernon secluded himself in a wintery Wisconsin cabin after a particularly poignant heartbreak. It's in this cabin where he wrote one of the saddest folk albums ever. This context makes the album even more sorrowful. Listening, you can't help but imagine Justin sitting alone in the cold with tears in his eyes while his fingers freeze to the fretboard. Living with the law has a similar mythological status in the pantheon of Chris’s discography and Blues music as a whole. Chris was taken off the streets of New York, after arriving there from a mysterious but certainly troubled past.
After watching the documentary Dust Radio on Chris Whitley's life, Living with the law takes on new meaning. Chris gave an interview during the documentary in a dark room, shirtless, and drunk. It’s here where he would give insight into the troubled past that Living with the Law only alluded to. Hearing the troubling story of how he and his younger brother were regulars at a bar at the age of 12 because of his alcoholic father. A bar in Arizona where a trough ran under the bar so you needn’t bother yourself with retreating to the restroom taking precious time away from the whiskey. The vagueness of living with the law’s lyrics all of a sudden gains clarity and can be interpreted as a young boy thrust into the real world at an age before he can understand it.
In the same interview within that liquor bottle-laden hotel room where Chris revealed these stories, he spoke about his creative process. He mentioned how he thinks about songwriting as poetics, mentioning how “even a bricklayer can be a poet.” However he proclaims, it's the job of the creative to take everything in and then transcribe how they feel about it. With this philosophy, it's easy to understand why Chris’s songs are shrouded with darker themes. What he took in was familial trauma, addiction, depression, failure, and longing. His art then became a representation of his feelings about those experiences.
Ethan Hawke had similar sentiments during an interview, where he said something that really stuck with me. He said that most people don’t think about art on a day-to-day basis because we all have lives to live. But it's when we encounter sorrow or elation so immense that we can't comprehend it, that we turn to art to explain it. In realizing that somewhere out there someone has felt how I felt we can achieve a form of catharsis.
It's in these stories behind the artists that they become human and more relatable to us. It's fair to look at songs as only titles on your Spotify playlist, or merely a unique arrangement of the 12-note musical spectrum. But when we see everything behind the curtain, suddenly those titles and arranged words gain meaning. The artist steps off the pedestal we put them on and joins us in reality. Chris suddenly changes from a potential blues-rock legend, into that drunk man you saw at the bar last night silently drinking his 11th whiskey alone. They become tangible individuals, not names on a screen.
However, this does not mean every artist has to literally be a physical manifestation of the art they create. Not all wallowing blues players need to have drugs and alcohol coursing through their veins, and every rapper doesn't need to be a hard gang-affiliated individual. Music and taste are purely subjective. If you love a song created by an AI who has no life experience, who am I to tell you it's not authentic enough. Too often today we glorify this idea of a troubled artist. I do believe there is a reason for this glorification, it's almost a guilty pleasure. When I listen to Chris’s sad poetic songs and then see his gaunt skeletal body it's almost reassuring. Knowing that he has seen the abyss of where humanity can go and then interpreted it for us… gives me a weird sense of solace. It’s akin to watching a movie that deeply resonates with you, and gives you an artistic awakening, only to end with “based on a true story.” Those words justify your feelings immediately.
Chris was a tortured soul, music to him was a means of expressing and exercising his demons. It's only a coincidence he happened to have a beautiful voice because with or without it he had to write and create either way. His writing, similar to his life, was dark and dirty. He was a drunk who even when diagnosed with lung cancer continued to smoke. He was an asshole, drunkenly yelling at producers and reporters. But his music represents this darkness and serves as a mirror to the listener. It's when we listen to his music that we are shown, we all have a little bit of Chris within us.
If art is to truly be a representation of reality, then authenticity matters more than anything. If we don't have poets, musicians, writers, and all creators to give meaning to this otherwise meaningless existence… then why exist at all. Why would we hold up a mirror to our society if we are just going to distort the reflection. If we fail to be authentic we will lose all sense of self, our sense of culture, and our ability to connect if we don't allow ourselves to be open. Perpetuating this distorted reflection and treating it as reality will be the death of authenticity. People will end up being fake copies of the most popular personality all while ignoring the unfavorable parts of themselves. In other words, without the honesty of Chris Whitley to help us reconcile with our demons, we might pretend they don’t exist at all.