The Man Who Would Be Wizard
During an artistically languid stretch of nearly two years following the demise of El Kabong, Christopher rarely picked up a guitar (except for a brief stint as temporary guitarist for teen punk sensations, The Kickz) 
or sang and seemed to have lost interest in composing any new music. “Ahhh yes….the “ATTEMPT AT GOING LEGIT YEARS”. I made the mistake of quitting the record store I was co-managing and going to work in the completely cutthroat world of medical marketing. Many sleazeballs have crossed my path in the music biz over the years, but all of them combined are NOTHING compared to the absolutely evil pieces of shit I encounted during that experience. I’d rather keep one foot in the gutter….at least there you know who your friends are.” The business world had it’s own perks and it’s own little whirlwind of excess to get caught up in, and there were many memorable days and nights spent with then girlfriend, Miss Hillary and working alongside longtime friend and brilliant photographer, Jeff Covington. Desperately wanting to find his way back to playing music again, Chris didn’t notice that he was already on his way there. During a moonlit drive through the hills of Austin, Texas with Hillary, Chris had a moment of clarity and saw the way forward. He elaborates, “We were listening to Nick Drake and I suddenly became aware of this thread connecting that and a bunch of other records I’d been playing around the same time. The Moody Blues, Syd Barrett era Floyd, Leonard Cohen, Robyn Hitchcock…. all of this very surrealistic folk music was starting to suggest a direction with the few bits of music and lyrics I was just getting back into putting together. El Kabong was like a character, so now I was creating a new character….not so much of the previous sounds of drunken shotgun blasts, but more like what pours out of your head when you’re sitting alone in a dark cellar with just a candle for light. It was more about getting certain emotions out in an interesting form without being whiny or boring. It was…Wizard Music, and I wanted to create my own little world within that world.” Chris took advantage of the Casa’s empty back office, turning it into a recording studio, which was utilized in mapping out the new directions he’d begun to explore. The awkward melancholy “I Miss You” (”A relationship from the past that still haunted me was the motivation for that one.”) was the first song to materialize under the moniker of Wizard Boots, followed quickly by a string of oddly dissimilar new recordings running the gamut from whispered lunacy (”I’m Naked”) to spaghetti western splendor (”Screaming At The Stars”) and depraved lecherous ravings (”She Used To Fuck Me”). Accomplished songstress Desiree’ Anastasia contributed vocals to several Boots compositions during a very loose recording session that produced the Radiohead-on-acid insanity of “Magic 8 Ball” and the ethereal “Lost Lovers”. With a stockpile of new material, obscure cover tunes and re-arranged El Kabong rockers in his constantly evolving repertoire, a return to the stage seemed imminent.
Chris chose his home turf at Jeff’s sprawling home/photo studio, Casa Del Covington for the first official show on December 10th 2005, unveiling the new project in the cavernous backroom studio beneath a shower of mirror balls and laser lights for an invitation only group of about twenty close friends. The single voice/acoustic guitar instrumentation was a radical departure from the electric bombast of El Kabong, but his twisted sense of humor and adventurous showmanship remained a part of the new direction. Later bringing Miss Hillary aboard to play tambourine for a hilariously inappropriate appearance at The Grapevine Bar, Wizard Boots continued forward as a duo for a few shows around Dallas. The pair also traveled north for a gig in Chris’ hometown of Fort Smith, Arkansas in March of 2006, his first performance there since the days of Voodoo Moon twelve years earlier. Things seemed promising and creativity was high, but a sinister undercurrent of chaos seemed to be lurking just beneath the surface and some performances were spinning out of control. “Hillary even walked offstage during one show in Dallas, and rightly so. I’d get a bit liquored up onstage and the shows would sometimes transform into a stream of conciousness that flowed into some very vicious places.” Returning to Fort Smith in April for a very long and chaotic set at Roosters, Wizard Boots ended the evening with a verbal battle against a roaming group of drunks that nearly turned violent. He laughs about it now and remembers the night as “A sign of things to come.” Back in Texas, Wizard Boots mutated once again with the addition of heavy hitting drummer, Paylyn 66. The trio, now billed as Wizard Boots & The Sex Zombies, made an explosive debut in late May of 2006 at Rack Daddy’s in North Dallas. They also hit the studio, slapping a sinister sonic stamp on several reworked El Kabong tunes as well as a handful of new Wizard Boots compositions. Stoner metal epic “The White Witch (This Is The Last Time I Sing Happy Birthday To You)”, pyromaniac love story “Gonna Set U On Fire”, the Spacemen 3 inspired “Raining Frogs” and the garage psych droning “Sex Zombie Theme” were all captured on tape during this period. Chris was primarily playing electric guitar again and experimenting with an extremely loud, bottom heavy reverb drenched sound that meshed with Paylyn’s brutal drumming
and took the mayhem of the live show up several notches. “We seemed to have set off down the path to the dark side. Things were getting crazy.” Chris and Hillary’s relationship fell apart amidst the chaos and she left the group in June, leaving the tambourine slot to a rotating cast of hooligans from the Assassination City Roller Derby League. The lovely Tank eventually became a fulltime Sex Zombie; Mia Hammer and Jessika Doom filled in for some shows. Strange droning keyboard flourishes, sampled electronic beats and a bizarre karaoke style cover of Wham’s “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go” all began to surface in the live show, evidence that Wizard Boots was still pushing forward creatively, but too much of a return to confrontational performances was starting to influence everyday life. “In addition to other gigs, we’d also conned our way onto the pool hall circuit and were making good money, but that scene is more suited for proper cover bands and here we were doing whatever the fuck we wanted and getting away with it…. no one was going to stop us, so naturally we had to stop ourselves. Can’t speak for anyone else, but I was an absolute mess at the time.” Following a particularly drunken mess of a performance at Coyote Ugly in Deep Ellum that violently spilled over into the next day, Chris was finally shocked out of his self imposed trance and tried to get his head back on straight. He led The Sex Zombies through the rest of July’s shows completely sober and to great effect, but couldn’t shake an overwhelming sense of depression and paranoia that had set in. Feeling like he couldn’t hold himself together any longer, much less a band, Wizard Boots announced he was leaving Texas just a few weeks after a final WB&TSZ’s show in Hurst TX on August 12th 2006. Despite the unraveling of his personal life, Boots now recalls more good times than bad during the brief Sex Zombie era. “We had a lot of fun, caused a whole lot of trouble, did quite a bit of damage and made a hell of a lot of noise while that whole period of the band only lasted about four months. It’s all a blur of violent sound and chaos looking back…sort of the “Motley Crue: Behind The Music” era of Wizard Boots. Actually, a lot of this stuff from back in Texas might sound tragic and depressing reading it, but the good times ALWAYS outweighed the bad for me. My peaks and valleys are just pretty extreme. I found out what it was like to truly have my heart broken in those years. I got knocked unconscious once too when a guy punched me out and my head hit the pavement, but a broken heart hurts much more and for much much longer.” Feeling lost and utterly defeated, as if Wizard Boots had gone the way of El Kabong and died, Christopher packed up everything he could into his van and moved back to Fort Smith.
A Year In The Fort
As usual, Christopher didn’t waste too much time dwelling on the negative and dove into everything he could back in Fort Smith to keep himself moving forward creatively. A plan to put music aside and attend technical college for welding was quickly abandoned and he secured a job as a camera/prompter operator for a local tv news organization. “I had so much fun and met so many cool people at that job….plus I was always curious about local affiliates of major network news and if the whole operation was as infested with bullshit as I had always suspected. It was. But, it was still a great experience and I found the sensory bombardment of working on three shows a night very stimulating.” Long bike rides on the outskirts of town were also inspirational and Chris would usually return home with a head full of musical and lyrical ideas which would spill out into his notebook. New songs began to surface. “(I’m Going To Go) Completely Insane”, “Let’s Pretend We’re In Love” and “Gravity” were already partially written shortly before moving out of Texas, but were now completed as rough recorded demos, along with the “Neil Diamond meets Meat Loaf” bombast of “Throwmyheartaway” and another new song called “Ten Years (3650 Days)”. “I still think that is one of the best songs I’ve ever written. Expressing that kind of desperation within the realm of a cheeky folk song kind of became my calling card in those days.” Helping out with digital mixes of the four track recordings was new musical accomplice, Blind Punch guitarist and producer, Christopher Jones at his elaborate Jelly=Spud Studio. That December during a night at the news, Chris became equally amused and fascinated by a story of the recurring holiday theft of the Baby Jesus from the downtown nativity scene in nearby Eureka Springs, and quickly wrote the rollicking “Who Snatched The Baby Jesus?”. “People still ask me about that one. It can be misunderstood as some crazy pro-religious thing, but it’s really all about the Eureka Springs story. One of the actual culprits even contacted me during our last tour, so…..mystery solved!” Christopher had also regained enough confidence by that time to attempt a return to the stage. “I don’t think I’ll ever give it up entirely. I just never fake it live, so that can be quite physically and mentally exhausting. It comes down to a matter of balancing what I want to get across musically with the circus aspects of it.” 
Along with percussionist Big Steve of local punk duo, Fire Don’t Care, Wizard Boots made his homecoming debut at Roosters on December 10th 2006, which coincidentally was exactly one year from the first show back in Texas. “That was a lot of fun. We played for over 3 hours and it just eventually degenerated into a sick party. I was happy to be home.” A second show at Roosters just after midnight that following Christmas eve was literally thrown together in the matter of about thirty minutes, but was even more of an epic adventure. “I played “Who Snatched The Baby Jesus?” for the first time that night as part of this weird holiday trilogy and also resurrected the El Kabong song “Just Like James Brown” as a tribute to The Godfather of Soul, since he’d just died that day.” By January Christopher was also working with producer/musician/director Chance Hambright on more new recordings. As part of a mission to write in his words, “the happiest goddamn song EVER!” Chris came up with the bouncy sing-along “Whydontcha?”. Chance produced the song at his own home studio and the concept of an actual Wizard Boots album was born. On January 21st 2007, another new band was unveiled at Roosters. Wizard Boots & The Horsehead Bookends featured Mr. Elsken on vocals and guitar, Big Steve on percussion, Chris Jones on guitar and Chance on keyboards. “It was great because we never needed to rehearse. They just knew what I wanted from working in the studio with me. All three of those guys are just fantastic musicians too.” The Roosters management and staff gave Wizard Boots free reign to experiment and encouraged the wilder side of the performance. Over the next year the venue would become the band’s live music laboratory, with everything from simple solo acoustic sets to over the top audio/visual mindfucks. “There were some great verbal exchanges with beligerant drunks in that bar….I was pretty fearless in there because I knew the bouncers always had my back. The people watching the shows loved it because all the chaos became a part of the show.” On a snowy February night the bar even let Chris run extension cords out the back door to his van, which he’d set up as a mobile recording studio. Everything from backing vocal tracks with talented local karaoke singers to lecherous interviews with erotic dancers from nearby Oklahoma were captured during that all night session. That month Chris also received a surprising email from legendary indie producer KRAMER, offering his mastering services for the forthcoming Wizard Boots album. “That was the point when I got really serious and obsessive about finishing the album. Kramer’s old band, Bongwater is one of my favorites and he was even a Butthole Surfer for awhile too, so it was pretty mindblowing for me.” As spring rolled in Chris, Chance and Jones labored away at various sessions in all three of their home studios on the ambitious project, which was now titled, “Dandelion Blossoms”. The variety of instrumentation alone was staggering for an independent release. Sparse acoustic love songs were transformed into massive towers of sound by Hambright’s flair for the orchestral….the final version of “Who Snatched The Baby Jesus” featured a sinister growling vocal by Death Metal Eric and a choirlike singalong on the coda lifted from Tina Turner’s Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome theme…Jones’ looped drums and brilliant slide guitar breathed new life into the crestfallen sentiment of “Completely Insane”….an infatuation with an anchor at a rival news station inspired “Oh My, Ashley B.”, a three part symphony of lust with samples from krautrock pioneers CAN and new wave poster boys Duran Duran…..and even El Kabong’s classic ode to sex & breakfast, “Pop Tart” was turned inside out and transformed into a slow burning menace. On April 7th 2007, an official CD release party was planned at Roosters, but unfortunately the album still wasn’t nearly finished. Wizard Boots & The Horsehead Bookends instead took the opportunity to do an even more elaborate stage show with electronic beats in place of drums and a huge projection screen. “That was when we started doing fairly long opening sets, disappearing for a 30 minute (ahem…) break
and then coming back for a really long and really weird second set. That show ended with a really big punch up too. Just keep this in mind when you’re throwing down comebacks at hecklers…..the particular member of said heckler’s family that you’re insulting, may not only be dead, BUT may in fact have just been buried that day. You never know.” By this time the long drawn out sessions for “Dandelion Blossoms” were driving Chris a bit over the edge. Balancing the workload of the album, doing the nightly news and the debauchery of winding down at the bar until dawn were leaving little time for things like sleep. “I tend to go a little crazy when I’m working on something like that anyway, but those days and nights were worth it. My creative side takes over and my rational side gets a bit overshadowed. I’d have these visions of being killed before we’d get the damn thing finished, then I started to draw Egyptian protection symbols on my hands with a sharpie.” The sprawling 21 track, nearly 80 minutes of “Dandelion Blossoms” were finally finished in early June. Boots & The Bookends along with Jones’ Blind Punch (who’d also just completed their own album) played a double barreled CD release show on June 9th 2007. In retrospect, Christopher is a bit more objective about the project. “It is A LOT of music to sit down and listen to in a world of ever shortening attention spans. There were just so many songs coming to me back then and I wanted to put it all out there. We should have just gone with the best 10 or 15 songs. Looking back on it though, even the songs I can’t stand to listen to now still belong on there. It is what it is….a beautiful mess….and a painting of what life was like then.” The band rarely surfaced to play live over the rest of the summer and most live Wizard Boots sightings were of Elsken and Jones with acoustic guitars roaming around downtown Fort Smith and playing on the streets or on the rooftop balcony of Roosters for tips. As the season was
winding down, Chris had his wandering gaze turned westward after his sister in California suggested he try moving out to the Bay Area where she lived. “It was an amazing year. I reconnected with so many old friends and made a bunch of new ones, spent a lot of time with my family there and got to know my Dad better than I ever knew him before. I took comfort in the fact that at least I wouldn’t be leaving town feeling defeated this time. If I could make a band like that work in a small town like Fort Smith, surely I could make it work just about anywhere…..right? Fort Smith was and will always be home but I’ve just got this crazy restless spirit and when it’s time to move on, I’ve got no choice but to go and find what’s out there.” On Friday September 21st 2007, Wizard Boots & The Horsehead Bookends played their farewell show in Fort Smith at Roosters. The band, augmented by various guest performers all night and anchored by the powerhouse drumming of Ted 
Zarras, opened rather appropriately, covering Styx’s “Come Sail Away” and over nearly four hours touched on just about every key musical reference point of Christopher’s musical journey thus far. He even had something up his sleeve for the hecklers this time; a one time performance of “Power Tools”, Wizard Boots’ industrial strength antagonism at full strength complete with a skull masked Elsken and Jones assaulting the audience with various electric gardening equipment. It was a triumphant end to his year in The Fort, but Chris had no time to bask in it. 48 hours later, he packed up the van headed west.
Lost In California
Arriving in Walnut Creek CA after an adventurous 3 day drive, Christopher surveyed the scenery and the situation. “I’d had visions in the back of my mind for probably the last ten years of just saying FUCK IT, packing up what I could and heading off to explore the west, but now here I was. 
I had actually done it. I think I spent the first few weeks just wandering the hills of the far East Bay and hiking all over downtown San Francisco. It was all so overwhelmingly new and exciting, and I began to ask myself….ok, you’re here. So, now what?” There was no plan, just a desire to find a way forward musically and relax while drinking up the cheap and plentiful local wines. (”Two Buck Chuck from Trader Joe’s!!!”) A job at a Concord record shop seemed promising but Chris could only stand it up through the holiday season into 2008, so he instead decided to spend the next few months unemployed to spend more time with his sister and nephew, take advantage of all the local libraries, hike & bike all over gorgeous Contra Costa County and of course, write and record new music. “I wasn’t ready to start a new band or really burning to go play live either. Over a six month period I only went out and played as Wizard Boots twice at open mic nights in Berkeley.” Taking all of the knowledge of photo editing he’d picked up from friends over the years, Chris began the trial and error process of learning to make short digital films. He envisioned eventually expanding his label Invisible Grizzly Agenda into a sort of umbrella company to produce not only his own music, but also films, artwork, album covers, and concert posters for other artists and performers . One early video experiment that came together as an official Wizard Boots music video was for a twisted lo-fi cover of The Frogs’ “I’ve Got Drugs (Out Of The Mist)”. Having had a desire to visit Portland OR for as long as he could remember, Chris decided to drive up and check it out that February. “It was surprising to me how different from California it was, and compared to Texas or Arkansas it was another planet. I made some new friends right away and even though it was grey and misty and freezing, it was absolutely beautiful and I fell in love with the place and knew that was my next destination.” Spring had arrived back in California and upon his return, Chris got back to wandering the aquamarine widescreen of the hills surrounding Walnut Creek. “Never, EVER talk a walk on a beautiful sunny day for granted. Mount Diablo was just a few miles out the back door. A typical day was to get up around 10am, walk down to the library and then head up into the hills to seek out new parks and trails where I could just get lost and write for hours. I’d also sometimes drive down to a little beach town just south of San Francisco to visit another friend who was something of a mystic. We’d spend entire days having these really heavy conversations…..stuff that would twist into unexpected places and blow your mind.” The endless scenery and laid back California vibes were definitely keeping his creative juices flowing and while very briefly getting sidetracked into writing a short science fiction story (”A couple of very disturbing and realistic dreams of giant killer cactus and an invasion of Earth by vicious alien arachnoids…..I was pretty freaked out and suspected the spiders were already there among us for a bit. California can do some pretty strange things to your head.”), Christopher was also seeking out unexplored sonic territory for some new compositions. 
Not so much wanting to completely abandon pop songwriting, he was still seeking out other musical influences to bring into the world of Wizard Boots….music based in the pure physicality of sound…..German industrial trailblazers Einsturzende Neubauten, space rock avatars Hawkwind and the visceral brilliance of The Fall. That April, Subterranean Sounds writer, Larry Steve checked in on a new batch of Wizard Boots’ music. “HeadlessHeart” – “Wizard Boots doesn’t know how to get over the girl.” “Fuckabouthat” – “Metal Box era Lydon reading junk mail in a whirling hall of knives.” “Contra Costa County” - “From the sparkle of Walnut Creek to the seedy side of Concord…Wizard Boots seems to know something we don’t.” “D.W.I.D.” - “This song is dying….and wearing black.” “Polishing The Stone (Sweet Melinda)” – “A dub day dream lost inside a nightmare. I’m told the Melindas are Walnut Creek’s own sub-species of Stepford Wife.” “The Cave Dwellers Bring Out Their Dead” – “Theme to an imaginary funeral.” “The Citadel” – “The theocratic kingdom of the Queen Snail declares war on the godless heathen masses. An epic battle. A hallucination.” In all, another double length album’s worth of material was recorded that spring, but Chris decided to hold onto the songs instead of investing financially into another record. “I could reinvent myself musically when I wanted to and certainly in the not too distant future there would be a vehicle for these songs. At that point I felt like I’d let my mind relax and unwind for long enough. I had done what I unintentionally intended to do there, which was find my way by getting lost. California is amazing, but I never felt completely at home there.” His nomadic tendencies were simmering again and this time he had his eye on the Pacific Northwest. A call from friends in Portland with a perfect rooming situation in a great old house was all it took. At the end of April 2008, Christopher once again packed up everything into the van, gave his only sister and favorite nephew farewell hugs and was off again.
Home Sweet Portland
Way back in Dallas on a hot summer night in 2005, Christopher somehow found himself onstage with his heroes, The Brian Jonestown Massacre…..taking the mic for the song “Sailor” when singer Anton Newcombe had lost his voice. That event led to a 3 year long email 
correspondence with fellow BJM fan, Anna V. way up in Portland. When he made the first journey up from California in 2008, the two finally got to meet in person and he even got a grand tour of the city by Anna’s husband, “Portland Ambassador” and superstar of the blogging world, Dieselboi. The couple invited Wizard Boots to rent a room at their stately manor where he transformed half of the huge basement into a studio that became known as the “Boot Cave”. “I’ve been really lucky to have such great friends all of my life, but I REALLY lucked out by meeting the two coolest and most wonderful people in Portland on my first visit. The city is magical and it still feels like I’m where I belong a year and a half later. The whole tavern/basement party culture is unique….if you love riding a bike like I do, there’s no city better to do it in…..and of course there are beautiful, mysterious women and bad girls in boots everywhere you look. If you can’t find something to put a smile on your face in this town, there’s something wrong with you.” In the spring of 2008 Chris formed a duo version of Wizard Boots with guitarist/percussionist “D“ (”I’m really lucky to have stumbled upon all of these wonderfully named people!!!” says Wizard Boots), and the two set off playing as many local shows as possible, almost immediately finding the hipster infested music scene as inspirational as it was frustrating. “Adversity and indifference will only make you work harder to make great art. Anyone who doesn’t consider the last 15 years before judging my music is probably an adult and can probably make up their own mind, but if they’re dismissing Wizard Boots for the wrong reasons, then they can FUCK OFF!“ 
Later that year the lineup became more permanent with the addition of percussionist, guitarist,bassist, synthesizerist Gerald “Grand Funk Railroad” Lunn, and The Andi on bass, keyboards, trumpet and rubber chicken. This was the version of the band that set off in the spring of 2009 for the barnstorming “Boots Up Yr America Tour”. “Easily the most fun I’ve had playing music in my life…..I think the mission of that tour was really just to see what would happen if we went out and played in places as far away as Tulsa and Tucson…..by the time we’d made it back home, Wizard Boots had really become a band. Grand Funk has such a unique and odd way about him…..an air of originality that is unusual for someone as young as he is….I think he’s got that Benjamin Button syndrome and he’s aging in reverse…..Andi is easily the coolest one in our circle….she’s half rock star and half secret agent.” Invisible Grizzly Agenda had expanded into a full blown production company by then and released a short tour documentary, capturing the insanity of life on the road with Wizard Boots:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B86aLa3Y3TY
Late in 2009 the band expanded yet again with addition of drummer/multi-instrumentalist Henchman 55 (Tony Aparacio), just in time for an onstage debut for Christopher’s 40th birthday show. The new four piece version of Wizard Boots played some very memorable shows over the next few months until yet another inevitable change in the line up. Gerald “Grand Funk” Lunn was uncerimoniously ousted from the band in the spring of 2010 midway through the recording sessions for the second album. “He made some great contributions to the ongoing story of Boots and I have nothing negative to say about him personally……I just couldn’t stand to spend one more second around that horrible fucking girlfriend of his. But I don’t like to dwell on the past….we won’t be stopped obviously and everytime there’s a change in the personel department, it’s an opportunity to bring some new sounds to the band.” With a trio at the core of Wizard Boots once again, work is nearing completion on the recording and mixing of the rollicking monstrosity, “Ole’ Biscuit Barrel!”. Christopher has been adamant about handling all of the production, recording, mixing and arranging himself this time, which has pushed the release back to mid-summer of 2010. “Although the recording of this new record has been a pain in the ass at certain points, Andi and Tony haven’t made anything difficult and always come through for me. It’s never been as sonically versatile and when I call down to the engine room for warp speed…..these wild young bohemians deliver. I don’t know if I’ve finally gotten it right by making every mistake I could possibly make playing music over the years…..Wizard Boots just seems like something that shouldn’t work, but
does. It has grown and evolved and mutated at it’s own natural pace…..some bands are all about marketing and going for “the next level”, but it feels good to have this one thing that the poisonous elements of the world can’t touch. Everyone has their own definition of success, but at this point I just feel successful to still be doing it. There have been so many times in my life when I felt like it was all over and I just wanted to find the nearest bridge to jump off of, but if there’s a philosophy or wisdom to what I do, it is that there is ALWAYS a way forward and somehow we will find it.”