“We all need to live a little if we want to write about living.”
So says recording artist Chris Trapper from Boston, who will be headlining yet another great show at Jupiter Hall on Hanover Street this Friday night.
A true road dog, Trapper has been knocking out one show after another for months in places like the Pacific Northwest to the green hills of Vermont. And he’s been kicking around writing and performing songs for a good long time now. I remember seeing his old band, The Push Stars, way back when, sometime, I want to guess, in the early 2000s at the Paradise in Boston. Maybe even further back than that.
That there, for a musician, is good living.
So, instead of me going on-and-on about Trapper, maybe we just let him tell the story. After all, it’s what he does best. Just read what he has to say about writing a song, about reading a crowd, about busting out of a writer’s slump and tapping into the spirit of Christmas at deadline when it’s 93-degrees and humid on the mean streets of Beantown.
Q. Let’s talk writing: When you’re composing a song, what comes first, the lyrics or the melody?
Generally the melody comes first. My phone is filled with little videos of me singing into it, and if someone discovered it not knowing the source, they would think its owner was a lunatic. Once I’ve collected enough little melodic ideas, I will go back and listen through to see if any of them stand out. If they do, I will see if a guitar part fits as well, and then finish up with lyrics. Lately, I’ve been starting with guitar parts though because I want my next record to focus a little more on acoustic guitar and fingerpicking.
Q. When you’re in a writer’s slump, how do you bust out?
I tried to reframe the writers slump mentally as just being a hiatus or a time for one to fill the tank with new ideas. We all need to live a little if we want to write about living. So basically I forgive myself for the lack of output. Luckily I haven’t been pressured much to write songs, aside from a few movie things, so basically I only write when inspiration strikes. Luckily that has been pretty often. I have also learned to respect the timeliness of an idea because In the early days I lost a few ideas due to procrastination, so now when an idea comes, I bunker down immediately. But I got into music to escape from pressure, so “writer’s slump” is not really in my vernacular.
Q. Are you a seasonal writer? Do you write better in the warmer months or the colder ones? And do the tone and subject coincide with the season?
That’s an interesting question. I don’t think the quality of my writing varies by the season. It is always touch-and-go on a song-to-song basis. I think the setting might set the mood that might motivate me to write, but whatever is on the other side of the windows should be less crucial than what’s going on in my head, hopefully, if the creative process is flowing. For instance, I wrote a full record of original Christmas songs a few years back and to get the record done in time, I had to write the bulk of the songs over the summer, in Boston, which can get quite hot and humid. But I got really into the process, and really deep into my own head, so I was able to cull up a series of very strong memories of Christmas from my childhood … some sad, some joyful, some funny, too.
I have some songwriter friends in San Diego who say it is virtually impossible to wake up there and find motivation to write a song because the weather’s too nice and there’s not much to complain about. I grew up in Buffalo and live in Boston now so I don’t have that problem.
Q. Regarding connecting to an audience, if you find yourself playing to a flat crowd, how do you go about firing them up?
There are certain tricks to the trade that apply in this situation. You know, still to this day the best performer I’ve ever seen was a retired fireman who gave a fire safety presentation at my 5-year-old son’s birthday party. He had twenty kids completely enthralled by what was basically sterile and serious subject matter. He literally had them eating out of the palm of his hand. The second he sensed the kids getting bored, he would ask them to clap their hands, or say a word out loud, do a little wiggly dance, or whatever else. The point is, we’re all just prone to boredom like kids, so I think it’s more important to recognize where the crowd is at vibe-wise than anything else because you can move them if you know what they’re feeling. I have toured a lot with Martin Sexton, and he is an expert at reading a crowd, and what to do if their energy is waning. He will even know minute details like when the venue needs to turn the air conditioning up, which sounds silly, but you’d be surprised the difference a few degrees can make on a crowd’s energy level.
Now we singer-songwriters can’t be as obviously manipulative as the retired fireman, but we can get some participation going, we can have the audience clap and sing along. As far as my show specifically, I try to have a lot of real moments on stage, where I tell my true life story. Sometimes honesty can be awkward, but that vulnerability can also wake up a crowd from a food coma and ultimately connect us.
Q. Is there a region of the country that you find a better response to your music than others?
Well yes, a little but I think that may be the result of exposure versus anything else. I have yet to feel like I have really connected in Texas but yet have had good career momentum in both North and South Carolina. One of my best towns is Edmonton Alberta, but as in most towns where I do well, I have played a festival, or a support slot, or gotten some radio play there. The one huge regional difference I feel is in the sense of humor. I try to blend a lot of stand-up comedy into my set, and I draw from Northeast-style sarcasm, which the south doesn’t always get because, in general, they are more polite and less jaded.
Catch Chris Trapper and the opening act Bea this Friday night at Jupiter Hall on Hanover Street, Manchester, NH. Show starts at 7:30 p.m. and tickets are $20. Opening act is folksinger Bea (BAY-uh).
Rob Azevedo is entrenched in the local music scene and hosts the Granite State of Mind radio show on WMNH 95.3 FM. Contact him at onemanmanch@gmail.com
