Instrumental Americana: Chris Proctor's Musical Background

Critics call his guitar playing "breathtaking," "haunting," and "rich." They describe his compositions as "spectacular," "elegant," and "exquisite." They trace the roots of his style to folk, jazz, pop, and classical music, and, when all else fails, they try and categorize his playing as "baroque folk," or "Instrumental Americana." The guitar press compares him to Leo Kottke and Michael Hedges. Another reviewer ventures this analysis: "In his taut, faceted compositions, Chris gives the guitar sole responsibility for a piece's rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic components, and in the process creates full-voiced 'guitar songs.' His playing illuminates the instrument's deepest voices and most sonorous qualities, rendering a pop-folk equivalent of the classical guitar sonata."

These luminous and diverse descriptives typify the first-time listener's response to Chris Proctor's innovative world of the instrumental, steel-string fingerstyle guitar. Original music, if it really lives up to its name, is always hard to classify, stewed from a unique set of ingredients, stirred by the writer's creative imagination, and defying easy categorization, but here's more of what listeners say about Chris Proctor:

• He is an acclaimed composer of original music and a wonderful arranger, whose chosen voice is the steel-string guitar.
• He is an innovative performer and recording artist of the highest order, with a gift for communicating the tremendous variety, vitality, and accessibility of his music.
• He coaxes sounds from his instrument which belie the guitar's "folk" or "everyman" reputation, raising it to a near-orchestral range.
• His compositions and arrangements span an amazing spectrum of folk, jazz, pop, classical, and ethnic sensibilities.
• His teaching and communication skills have led him to become a superlative workshop and master class leader, to author numerous instructional articles in the guitar press, and to produce two world-class instructional videos for 6 and 12-string players.

Ten CDs on Flying Fish, Windham Hill, Rounder and Sugarhouse Records, and his books, DVD's, videos, magazine articles, and endorsements all testify to Chris's standing as one of the elite fingerstyle composers, arrangers, and performers of the day.

Ladybug Stomp is fresh from the recording studio as of Spring 2007, and returns Chris to his compositional roots. It features eleven new original pieces, then finishes with a sweet duet with Artie Traum to close the CD with the beautiful old Stephen Foster piece, "Hard Times (Come Again No More)."
Chris Proctor- Guitar Collection has now been released on Alfred/Warner Publications, and brings us 12 of the pieces from the CD of the same name in music notation and tablature, along with an instructional CD to help the learner navigate the difficult sections of each piece.
• The Chris Proctor Collection, his late 2003 release, brings newly-recorded versions of 16 of his favorite and most popular original pieces into the acoustic limelight once again.
• Under the Influence, Chris's 2000 release from Sugarhouse Records, showcases his unique talent for original arrangements. This new CD will surprise and please listeners with its familiar pieces taken from Chris's musical roots in folk, classical, jazz, and pop traditions. Read more about Under the Influence.
• Taylor Guitars of El Cajon, CA, introduced the "Chris Proctor Signature Model" guitar in 2001, a custom instrument with a unique package of electronics, all designed to his specifications and available through Taylor's dealers. Taylor also promotes Chris's fingerstyle guitar workshops at music stores across the country as partners to his concert tours.
• Mel Bay has published three collections of Chris's compositions, Fingerstyle Magic, a selection of favorite earlier works, the complete folio for Travelogue, and the popular Only Now book/CD set, as well as including additional Proctor compositions in recent fingerstyle anthologies and compilations.
• Windham Hill Records has included Chris on two of their prestigious releases, The Windham Hill Guitar Sampler, which contains Chris's classic, "The Emperor's Choice," and has chosen his "Ozymandias" to be featured on Sounds of Wood and Steel III."
• Acoustic Guitar has released two "Best of Year" book/CD volumes, Fingerstyle Guitar Masterpieces, which contains Chris's stellar arrangements of "California Dreamin'" and "Paint It Black," and Southbound, which included his amazing "Tap Room."
• Homespun has released two instructional DVD/videos, Contemporary Fingerstyle Workshop with Chris Proctor, and Techniques for Contemporary 12-String Guitar, to strong critical and popular response

As critical commentary (go to the critiques page for details) demonstrates, Chris's live and recorded work has attracted high praise from those music critics and reviewers who also find it so challenging to label. More to the point, he's a favorite of guitar and music lovers, who know that all you really have to do is listen- and enjoy.

Chris Proctor's Ancient History:

There are those who want the early dirt, not the polished resumés which are written after the musician ascends to his professional niche and acquires the usual impressive list of recordings, publications, concert venues and awards. This section is for those folks:

• Chris was born in Germany as an Army brat in 1951, moving 6 times before the family settled in Salt Lake City in 1964.
• Early on in Salt Lake City, during pre-teen and teenage years, the guitar was an occasional oddity to Chris, who played stirring renditions of songs like Tom Dooley on an old out-of-tune black Silvertone acoustic played lap-style, one note at a time. The notion of chords hadn't yet made any appearance in his life. No signs of early talent were evident at this point.
• His later teenage years show Chris discovering the chord, and learning upwards of 5 of them, which of course made him eligible for the local garage band, whose only venue was the Fort Douglas Teen Club adjacent to Salt Lake City. The band's repertoire consisted of any 60's rock song to which any of the members could figure out the chords, such as Born on a Bayou, Satisfaction, Gloria, LIttle Black Egg, Day Tripper, and House of the Rising Sun. No signs of early talent were evident at this point.
• Late in high school and then in college, Chris stumbled across country blues, and it brought the epiphany to which instrumental players so commonly testify afterwards. A basement coffeehouse at the University of Utah, a couple of good blues players, and his life changed. He finished his studies in philosophy, but by the time he graduated in 1973, he was playing guitar 6-8 hours per day, listening to whatever records he could find, (Leo Kottke, John Renbourn, and a host of blues players like Blind Blake, Mississippi John Hurt, Elizabeth Cotten and Tampa Red). He located a few learning materials like Happy Traum's early fingerstyle instructional books, and took all of two lessons from a local blues and folks guitarist.
• He seemed to have a knack for fingerstyle, learning pieces almost daily, and acquired a taste for tunings, for slide, for the 12-string, and for the techniques which make this style so challenging for the player and satisfying for the listener.
• He moved to Idaho, where his guitar playing, if anything, increased in intensity, and began to perform in duo settings with local folk singers in the usual dives and clubs which hosted that sort of music. A few fledgling instrumental pieces emerged from his 6 and 12-string guitars, but nothing special. Having no instruction available in rural Idaho, and no listening venues for original instrumental pieces, Chris moved back to Utah in 1978.
• Back at home, he sold instruments and taught at a local music store, and enrolled again at the University of Utah, this time to study music theory, sight-singing, ear-training, counterpoint, and jazz theory for the next two-and-1/2 years. Chris now sees this decision to take on college-level comprehensive piano-based music theory training as the single best musical commitment he has ever made. It's fair to say that his musical skills and knowledge grew by leaps and bounds during this period.
• His original instrumental pieces grew in complexity and his technique grew apace. Local gigs around Utah and the Intermountain West followed, and he recorded a few instrumental and vocal pieces on a demo tape (which he now hopes has disappeared from the world completely).
• He attended the Walnut Valley Festival in 1980 and 1981, competing in the Fingerstyle Competition in both years, then returned to win the competition in 1982, playing a selection of original pieces which wowed the judges and which led him to be invited to perform and judge at the festival the following year.
• In January of that same year, 1983, he release his first recording, Runoff, On Kicking Mule Records of Alderpoint, CA, and began touring nationally. That event more or less brings us up to the rest of the story, contained on other pages herein, particularly the resume page.
• Personal update- Chris lives in Salt Lake City with his lovely wife Tomi, and enjoys backcountry skiing, flyfishing, backpacking, hiking, river-running and other wacky physically-challenging outdoor adventures. He has too many Taylor guitars, and looks forward to playing every one of them.