The best thing you could possibly do to start this year off with a bang is to make a firm commitment to go see a show by a musician you’ve never heard of before, a musician like Chris Ayer.
Influenced by everyone from Elvis to Paul Simon, and sounding a bit like Incubus’ Brandon Boyd, were he ever to go solo, Ayer will bring a fresh, welcome face to the typically crusty Hawthorne Theatre this Monday.
A singer-songwriter by profession, Ayer has been honing his craft in Northern California dive bars for years and has recently relocated to the Big Apple for a chance to really take his music seriously. His first full-length, This Is The Place, takes an in-depth, poetic look at life on this rocky island we call Earth. It’s something that deserves a listen.
Ayer is graciously bringing his unique sound to the Northwest, beginning his tour here in mother Portland and then gradually rocking his way down Highway 101, in true troubadour fashion. This week, the Vanguard talks to this up-and-coming independent artist about graduating from Stanford, fighting Bob Dylan and floating through outer space.
Where are you from originally, and what inspired you to start playing music?I grew up in the northern part of Virginia. I was actually born in California, but my parents moved to D.C. for work when I was four years old. I guess I’ve always liked singing and I didn’t even write songs or play guitar until late in high school, but when I picked it up, I really just loved it and took it with me when I went out west for college. At some point during school, it became clear to me that it was not just a hobby. It was more like everything up until this point was leading up to me wanting to play music.
Where is the best place to play a show, and why? Hmmm. Wherever I can go that people can get excited and come together and have a good time. So far for me, a good show always happens really unexpectedly. Sometimes you’ll go to places where everything’s set up to go perfectly and something goes wrong, but on the positive side, you can go into a town with a bunch of worries and end up having a great time. The Bay Area’s always awesome. I get a lot of folks from different backgrounds at the shows there: college kids, 20-somethings, even the 50- and 60-year-olds come out and listen! Just having that range is a really cool vibe, and I think that’s my favorite.
Are there any cities you don’t like playing in? Playing live in the big cities like New York or L.A. has ended up being a really good experience for me, but sometimes it sucks. It can be demoralizing, you know, because they are so full of entertainment and music already that it can be hard to get the word out, let alone get anyone in the music business to pay attention. Sometimes I’ll play in New York and it’s unexpectedly awesome, and sometimes it’s just… crickets, but it’s been a really good lesson.
I read somewhere that you went to college at Stanford. What made you decide on a career as a musician after you graduated, and were you a very serious student while you were there? I would not call myself a very serious student. I did get really into studying philosophy and creative writing there, but those aren’t tracks where it’s hyper competitive job market type stuff. Making the big money happen was never a priority of mine in college. I was just excited to be learning. Sometimes the grades were good, sometimes they were… less good. I liked the lyrical element to creative writing. I took it and combined that with a general desire to hit the road and see the country. I played a few shows at parties, and when I graduated, I decided I just needed to get out of there and give it a shot.
What kind of guitar do you use on stage, and do any of your instruments have names? I have an acoustic guitar that I’ve been playing for about five years now, a Gibson G-45 with super nice bass tones. I’ve had a couple of names that I’ve thrown on it, but none of them really stuck. I was calling it “Ringo” for a while, but then I decided it was a female guitar, and I didn’t want it to get confused.
Do you have a favorite chord progression that you find is easier than others to write songs to? I started writing when I had very minimal musical knowledge. A lot of folk songs use three or four simple chords. You just have to combine them and tweak it in a way that works with your individual style.
If you had the chance to fight any famous celebrity, who would it be and why? It would be great to see Bob Dylan get all riled up, because he’s always so chilled out. That’s not to say that I’d necessarily want to fight him, because I love the guy, but some people are always so calm that it would be interesting to see what they would do if they got really pissed off.
I really dig the cover art on your new album, This Is the Place. How did you come up with the concept for the house floating in space, and who was the artist? Actually, I drew that picture! I knew pretty early on that I wanted the album to be called This Is the Place, the concept being that I had no real sense of rooted-ness in any certain area. I have been traveling a lot, and I hadn’t really found any community in the traditional way, but for the first time, it made sense to me. I kind of got this idea of having your own reality that just floats through space, and it helped me gain perspective. It’s basically a visual representation of the discord that comes with feeling grounded in a place but also being isolated in the same way, which can be a difficult thing to convey, but I think the art ended up working out pretty well.
What record label are you on now? So far, all of my records have been self-released. I’m just trying to build it up slow and steady, just get the music out to folks and play a bunch of shows. If a deal comes up somewhere down the line, then that’s cool, but for now I’m trying to keep my overhead low, have a good time and stay true to myself.
Chris Ayer Hawthorne TheatreMonday, Jan. 14 8 p.m.$5 21+