{"id":4240,"date":"2010-11-19T07:47:04","date_gmt":"2010-11-19T12:47:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=4240"},"modified":"2012-06-25T20:55:54","modified_gmt":"2012-06-26T00:55:54","slug":"chris-amodeo-comes-alive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/chris-amodeo-comes-alive\/","title":{"rendered":"Chris Amodeo Comes Alive"},"content":{"rendered":"<iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/HwDba4X7sqU?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><p>A couple times a year I meet someone at a party, a show, or even here here in the Halls of Rock, get into a deep conversation about music, and then get around to asking this music lover what instrument he or she plays. &#8220;Oh, I can&#8217;t play an instrument,&#8221; the person tells me, &#8220;I&#8217;ve got no rhythm!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I usually don&#8217;t say much, but inside I&#8217;m blown away that this person who knows so much about the music he or she loves, maybe even knows some of the music theory behind it, claims to have absolutely no ability to play any instrument, not even poorly. <em>You&#8217;ve got hands,<\/em> I want to say, <em>you&#8217;ll find some kind of rhythm!<\/em> Maybe I shouldn&#8217;t be so idealistic, or presumptuous, but I&#8217;d like to hear every music lover take a crack a playing an instrument. I&#8217;d like to hear ever music lover&#8217;s song, or if not actually hear it know that it&#8217;s out there. <em>File Under &#8220;Freak Flag.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-4266 alignleft\" title=\"coachhouse2sm\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/coachhouse2sm-194x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"194\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/coachhouse2sm-194x300.jpg 194w, https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/coachhouse2sm.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 194px) 100vw, 194px\" \/>Earlier this year <strong>Townsman sammymaudlin<\/strong> told me about a new design project he was kicking off for a friend&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/homo-luminous.com\/home\/\" target=\"_blank\">album cover and website<\/a>. The story behind the debut album\u00a0by <strong>Chris Amodeo <\/strong>was like something out of a Hollywood adaptation of an Oliver Sacks book: middle-age Master Rolfer (a body-centered form of psychotherapy) and <a href=\"http:\/\/chrisamodeo.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">voiceover artist<\/a>\u00a0buys his first guitar at a fundraiser for the dying son of his friends, begins playing Beatles songs to his own kids, is encouraged by his wife to write a song for their son, and soon thereafter is flooded with the gift of songwriting. Song ideas invade his activities of daily living. Less than two years after first\u00a0picking up a guitar Amodeo is playing his songs for friends at some Oliver Stone-worthy shindig, where it is determined he must enter a studio and record an album of his songs. The resulting album, <em>Homo Luminous<\/em>, is not just an inspiring testament to a middle-age dog learning new tricks but an accomplished, melodic album of songs expressing the spirit and hopes of a grown man.<\/p>\n<p>In anticipation of his <strong>November 20th<\/strong> show at\u00a0<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thecoachhouse.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">The Coach House<\/a><\/strong>, in San Juan Capistrano, CA, I spoke to Chris about his latent awakening as a musician and songwriter, the making of the album, and his recent success in turning our mutual friend, The Back Office&#8217;s sammymaudlin, onto the elusive charms of <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php\/band-you-ve-had-no-success-turning-frien\/\" target=\"_blank\">Be Bop Deluxe<\/a><\/strong>. We concluded our chat with a round of <strong>Dugout Chatter <\/strong>and by looking forward to the completion of voiceover work this <em>VH1 Behind the Music<\/em> veteran is doing in support of a future Rock Town Hall initiative.<!--nextpage--><\/p>\n<p>After buying his first guitar in support of his friends&#8217; son, Chris began learning the songs of The Beatles, Elton John, James Taylor, and other childhood favorites. He&#8217;d play his kids those songs before they went to bed. &#8220;So I&#8217;m learning and absorbing these songs that I&#8217;d naturally gravitated toward, and everybody thinks it&#8217;s great, it&#8217;s fun. I&#8217;m embracing something I&#8217;ve loved my whole life.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Then, as his son&#8217;s 10th birthday approached, his wife suggested he write a song for him. &#8220;What?!?! I don&#8217;t know how to write a song. I&#8217;ve never written a song!&#8221; His wife wouldn&#8217;t let up, he continues, &#8220;So she leaves me there kind of slack-jawed. It was the weekend and I found myself as a dad, with soccer and all&#8230;No one was home, so I had a window of time. I grabbed my guitar, sat and meditated, then <em>BOOM<\/em>, a song about my son&#8217;s birth spilled out.\u00a0I thought, <em>That&#8217;s incredible.<\/em>&#8221;<\/p>\n[audio:http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/13-Chris-Amodeo-Splittin-The-Atom.mp3|titles=Chris Amodeo, &#8220;Splittin&#8217; The Atom&#8221;]\n<p>A debut performance of &#8220;Splittin&#8217; the Atom&#8221; for his son and family followed. &#8220;It was emotional, and I thought that was it, a one-time thing. And then our daughter said, &#8216;Will you write me a song?'&#8221; He replied, not as confidently as he would have liked, &#8220;Sure, honey!&#8221; After\u00a0repeating the same process\u00a0that led to his\u00a0song for his son nothing clicked. &#8220;I&#8217;d read about this,\u00a0and I realized it just has to come.&#8221;\u00a0A few weeks later he was having a discussion with a fellow father at the pool where his kids swam and an idle discussion about oil unlocked the idea of &#8220;Love Could Run the World.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>From this point he was hooked. Songwriting presented new challenges to Chris&#8217; everyday life. &#8220;There was a phase of taking these songs that came out of the blue over a period of about a year of intense, almost psychosis, where I&#8217;d be working with clients\u2014I&#8217;m a rolfer\u2014where I&#8217;d be doing intense\u00a0cranial work that requires the utmost silence and sensitivity, and all of a sudden I&#8217;d hear a complete chorus in my head. I&#8217;d think, &#8216;Whoa, this is trippy.'&#8221; On his breaks from work he&#8217;d hole up in his office with\u00a0his guitar and figure out the chords he was hearing.<\/p>\n<p>Amodeo finds himself in for the long haul as a musician, but\u00a0he&#8217;s not\u00a0&#8220;chasing the dream&#8221;;\u00a0he&#8217;s living it. He hopes other music lovers will take a chance at\u00a0making music. &#8220;Even people in the music industry ask me, &#8216;Why do you want to get into this now, don&#8217;t you realize it&#8217;s dead?&#8217; [I tell them] This is not my intent; my intent was not to get into the Music Business. My intent is not to be a pop star.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Instead Amodeo is committed to writing about life as he knows it. &#8220;Up to this point I&#8217;ve spent the last 21 years in this little magic box of therapy,&#8221; he says, referring to his rolfing work, &#8220;working with other humans on a one-on-one basis, and all of it is about personal transformation.&#8221; It&#8217;s this notion of personaltransformation that he finds at the root of his lyrics. &#8220;I guess I have more say at this point in my life than I would have as a young man,&#8221; he adds, &#8220;I probably would have talked about cars and women\u2014both awesome subjects, but I probably would have been hamstrung content wise.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>After writing his first batch of songs, Amodeo experienced an &#8220;explosion of creativity&#8221; while integrating shamanism into his rolfing practice. He explains, &#8220;I was going out to the desert and working with Peruvian shamans, then flying out to Utah and then going down to the Amazon.&#8221; One night he decided to play some of his songs for his class of 109 students. Then and there one of his students offered to put together financial backing for what would become the <em>Homo Luminous <\/em>album. (See what I meant about the two Olivers in the introduction, Sacks and Stone?)<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_4267\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4267\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-4267\" title=\"rayweston\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/rayweston-300x264.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"264\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/rayweston-300x264.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/rayweston.jpg 450w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-4267\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Producer\/drummer Ray Weston<\/p><\/div>\n<p>A\u00a05-month period of learning how to work in a studio with a band followed. Chris and his friends would marvel over this opportunity. &#8220;They&#8217;d say, &#8216;Dude, if nothing else ever happens how many people get the opportunity to go in the studio and be given carte blanche to make a record?'&#8221; An experienced studio band, led by veteran drummer\/producer <strong>Ray Weston <\/strong>(Robert Palmer, Tom Jones, Big Audio Dynamite,\u00a0Bjork, Bill Wyman, Andy Summers et al) walked him through the ropes. Over time he learned to talk to musicians.<\/p>\n<p>The band, which is rounded out by members who&#8217;ve worked with Ronnie Spector,\u00a0The Motels, David Gilmour, The Rolling Stones, and Vanilla Ice, would eventually guide the novice Amodeo from the sobering confines of the studio to the electricity of the stage. A show at The Coach House this past October was his first actual club show following nothing more than a few low-key coffeehouse-type performances. A show at LA&#8217;s legendary <strong>Whiskey-a-Go-Go<\/strong> is being lined up. When told of this offer the level-headed, late-blooming musician couldn&#8217;t help but tap\u00a0into thoughts of The Doors and\u00a0&#8220;all these teenage fantasies.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Back to earth, Amodeo has no illusions about &#8220;making it,&#8221; in the traditional sense, but he&#8217;s open to&#8230;miracles. &#8220;There&#8217;s a part of me that&#8217;s still wide-eyed, but I just laugh. I&#8217;m having fun with it. People tell me, &#8216;Oh yeah, you&#8217;re gonna have to struggle&#8230;&#8217; but you know, I have no interest in slogging it out in bars for years. This came about so cosmically. Maybe it won&#8217;t happen like that, maybe it will just unfold and there&#8217;ll be\u00a0a certain audience and it will just open up and I won&#8217;t have to beat my head against the wall or feel like an abject failure if Wembley doesn&#8217;t book my next show. It&#8217;s like when I work with clients I&#8217;m always open for miracles to happen&#8230;then I&#8217;m prepared for getting down and doing the work that&#8217;s necessary.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><em>Next&#8230;Chris Amodeo faces a round of audio Dugout Chatter!<\/em><!--nextpage--><\/p>\n<div class=\"image_block\" style=\"text-align: center;\">\n<div><object classid=\"clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" codebase=\"http:\/\/download.macromedia.com\/pub\/shockwave\/cabs\/flash\/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0\"><param name=\"data\" value=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/dugout400x400.swf\" \/><param name=\"src\" value=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/dugout400x400.swf\" \/><embed type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/dugout400x400.swf\" data=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/dugout400x400.swf\"><\/embed><\/object><\/div>\n<\/div>\n[audio:http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/Chris-Amodeo-RTH-Dugout-Chatter.mp3|titles=Chris Amodeo RTH Dugout Chatter]\n<p><em>Note: In true rock nerd form, Chris called me about 15 minutes after we concluded our interview. He wanted to ammend his &#8220;least-favorite Beatles song&#8221; answer, feeling that &#8220;Her Majesty&#8221; was a &#8220;cop out.&#8221; Although he still wasn&#8217;t sure what his specific choice would be, for the record he wanted to be clear that it was one of a few from their pre\u2013pot-smoking days.<\/em><\/p>\n<nav class=\"page-links\"><strong>Pages:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/chris-amodeo-comes-alive\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">1<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/chris-amodeo-comes-alive\/2\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">2<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/chris-amodeo-comes-alive\/3\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">3<\/span><\/a><\/nav>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A couple times a year I meet someone at a party, a show, or even here here in the Halls of Rock, get into a deep conversation about music, and then get around to asking this music lover what instrument he or she plays. &#8220;Oh, I can&#8217;t play an instrument,&#8221; the person tells me, &#8220;I&#8217;ve <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/chris-amodeo-comes-alive\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342,667],"tags":[133,31,67],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4240"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4240\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}