Chris Kasper is a songwriter's songwriter, an artist who won devoted fans and awards seemingly from the moment he released his first record, a demo recorded in a friend's living room in 2002. Kasper soon relocated to Philadelphia, where he has built a devoted following not only of music lovers, but of his fellow songwriters and musicians. Kasper maintains that his peers remain his most important audience, and they often can be found singing every word along with him at his shows, even on songs that have never been released
Chris Kasper: Bio
He had a good name, it fit like the leather of your childhood baseball mitt. He was Chris Kasper; friendly like the Ghost you grew up with but still ripe with mystique and pang like any Ghost worth his sheets.
When I met him in the opium dens of sunnyside WV he was living next door. I never asked how he got there. He was just there when I got there. I think he had a year of Film School at Seton Hall but don't quote me on that. I get the feeling the guitar was still something of a novel sexy thing to him then. He spent time in front of the speaker re-listening to folk songs and guitar solo's and figuring them out by ear. Dave Brubeck couldn't read music when he graduated from the University of Pacific...bet you didn't know that.
Kasper quickly became local talent. Next thing I knew he's onstage in all the local bars. He seemed to have figured something out the rest of us weren't quite privy to; musically, and psychologically. He was hanging out with the cool local bands a few years older then us. I was just a maniac on the side skipping from bar to bar with a skateboard.
Later we got buddy buddy over serious games of pool in WV, skating from place to place, smoking the reef behind buildings, laughing outloud at everything feuding around us, listening to jazz records, drinking Guinness in Terrapin Station or discussing wino philosophy, running photocopies of flyers and abstract poetry and handing them out to our would-be audiences taking strides to make sure the pretty girls got in free.
Now-a-days he's paid his dues. I often respect the man when the weekend is over and I go rushing back to my big city for another Monday. He sleeps like a stone at the bottom of the sea. Yet he's one of only a few real deal pals, proficient in his art, prolific in his approach. Big ups to anyone who lives and dies and breathes by their art, who risks everything else for… art. That's some honorable shiet. Like a potter who pots, Kasper's a trifecta: a poet who sings, a guitarist who turns heads, and a hustler who makes it happen. He went from just from gigin' out a few nights a month to quietly stringing it all together, tighter and tighter, week-by-week, day-by-day, until life became a tour, THE tour. Wait till you see this boy now. I just get to ride along, occasionally, setting up, carrying the heavy boxes, and talk to the pretty girls who seem to always be at his shows. It's easy work for me.
Life is an improvization we would say...Toys and Robots Toys and Robots...we have our laughs but the kids got heart, he's down, he's in it with heart, soul, and everything else that make that kid tick.
I have to tell you one story too. It's 2002, maybe 2003...Kasper calls me up, says theirs a big gig in San Diego. Say no more. We couldn't book our tickets fast enough. A few weeks later we touch down, book a silver Mustang and roll from LA into San Diego as fast as we wanted to go.
I didn't sleep for 58 hours. After getting lost in Tijuana, we eventually made it out of Mexico to the Festival, adopted names and strolled thru the after-parties carrying a nude Roman statue we copped up from the pool. The scene was bananas. We laughed the entire drive back to Timo's that night, flinging (god forbid my littering) useless sample cds and gold Sacagawea coins at the street bums intelligent enough to pick San Diego to bum in. "The streets are ours!" we yelled.
Since then he seems to have found his nitch in Philadelphia. He told me he a small label signed him. There wereCD release parties in Philly and NYC.
Homeboy pays the rent. He feeds his old dog. He lives life in and around song, inviting whoever and everyone to join in. He does need an agent though, drop him a line. I'm just a wandering roadie.
-Ringo Domingo