iNTERViEWED
BY BRiAN LUSH
For years, many of the interviews that I’ve conducted
profiled bands and artists at the start of their careers. As an
observer, I
always get the sense that the sky is the limit for these artists even
though
they may not have much appreciation for the delicate position that they
are in.
For many, the musical journey is only beginning but in the case of
DAVID
CHRISTENSEN, the journey ended in February of 2009 when the twenty-six
year-old
singer-songwriter committed suicide. Music was the only stabilizing for
in
DAVID CHRISTENSEN’s all-too-short life. He made his presence known as a
singer,
bassist and guitarist for such outfits as GREEN JENKINS, STAND UP
STRAIGHT,
PROJECT 88 and TINY SNEAKERS while experimenting with his own
songwriting on a
four-track machine. CHRISTENSEN sadly never recorded a solo album but
his life
and music are memorialized on the CD ‘DAVID CHRISTENSEN TRIBUTE, VOLUME
ONE’
where the late songwriter’s music is given a voice by contributing
artists such
as DEVIN BELLE, TAYLOR HENRY, BEN OLSON and RACHEL WILLIAMS. The
album’s
production was based off of demos found by DAVID’s grieving father ERIC
CHRISTENSEN who proceeded with overseeing the production of the tribute
CD and allotting
a portion of the proceeds to the AMERICAN FOUNDATION FOR SUICIDE
PREVENTION.
ROCKWIRED
spoke with ERIC CHRISTENSEN regarding the creation
of the tribute CD. Here is how it went.
The tribute CD DAVID
CHRISTENSEN, VOLUME ONE has all of these voices singing your son’s
music. How
does that feel?
I was just totally pleased with the results. In some cases
people nominated themselves to sing on the album and in some other
cases folks
that I knew helped me to pick people that they thought would be the
right ones
to perform the songs. I was just totally floored by the way it came
out. I
couldn’t be happier.
Was music something
that was always with DAVID?
Absolutely! As a matter of fact I was just looking at a
picture I have a picture of him taken when he was about two years old
when he
got his first guitar. Of course, he couldn’t play it at that time. In
the
picture, he has this big grin on his face and holding this guitar. I
myself
have been playing music since I was a teenager had been playing in and
out of
bands for my entire life. At one point, when DAVID was in high school,
we had a
small studio that we put together and did some recordings with. Music
had been
around DAVID his whole life. He was just totally absorbed by it. He was
so
gifted musically that it was like he was from another world.
Music was encouraged
when he was growing up.
Absolutely! When he was in high school we was in two
different bands and we recorded two full length CD’s. This was around
1998. We
thought that was a great thing for him to do and he got so much joy out
of it.
I always encouraged him. DAVID’s problem was that he was good at just
about
everything so he went college and got hired onto a real job right out
of
college and from there, he kind of let the music stuff go a little bit.
I had
always told him that when you’re young and you want to do something
with your
music than now is the time to do it. I tried to get him to go to
BERKLEE
instead of going to a regular college. He was always torn because he
was good
at other things.
How were the songs
for VOLUME ONE selected? I have no idea how many songs DAVID had
written in his
lifetime.
Over the years, he had sent us various versions of these
songs. These songs were mostly him on either a guitar or a piano. When
he died,
we found on his computer at his home that he had made many, many
recordings and
had worked on lots of different musical things. Some of them, I don’t
think
anyone had ever heard except DAVID. I spent the first six months going
through
all of that stuff and listening to it and kind of learning it myself
and coming
to understand it. The firs thing we did before the tribute CD was, we
took
maybe about twelve recordings that were the best and put them on a CD.
That was
all that we were going to do initially and make it available only to
family
members but when we did that and started showing it to people, so many
people
took an interest in it and that encouraged me to do more. I started
playing
some of his other stuff for people and they really liked it. We weren’t
trying
to make this CD a cohesive collection or anything like that. If you
listen to
it you’ll hear that there are several different genres being
represented so I
didn’t try to make it cohesive in that sense. I simply picked the songs
that I
thought would be the most interesting.
In listening to his
music immediately after his death, did it help at all or was it hard to
do?
It was very hard because he would send us these songs that
he had done and we would be like ‘Hey, that’s a pretty cool song Man!
That’s
neat!’ You don’t necessarily engage and get into it. After he died, we
learned
more about some of his struggles which we weren’t fully aware of. Now
you
listen to the same songs and you hear the words and all of sudden and
you
realize that his songs were very clearly articulating his state of mind
as he
was declining. When he was alive we didn’t notice any of that. That
part was
very difficult at first. It was like a whack to the head. If we had
listened a little
harder, maybe we could’ve realized what kind of pain he was in and we
never did
that. That was the painful side of it. The less painful side of it was
realizing that even though he is gone that we were finally getting to
know him.
It was a small consolation but it made me feel a little better.
How old was he?
He was twenty-six.
From the CD, which
performance resonates for you the most?
The first song that we put on the CD was called ‘LET ME DOWN’.
It was a song that he written for his girlfriend after he had had a
breakup
with her but for us, that song had take on a secondary meaning because
we all
had felt that we had let DAVID down. When I hear the chorus of that
song it
just breaks my heart and DEVON’s
performance
on it is so full of emotion. The other one is the song ‘IMAGINARY
FRIEND’ which
ends with the line ‘I just wasn’t real/I
was gone’. It’s one of those moments where you get the
feeling that he was
trying to tell us something. The last one that really gets to me is the
song ‘MOTORCADE’.
That song was a vision of himself in a hearse and in the chorus it goes
‘If you could let me out of this motorcade?’
I think he saw himself being drawn to that and probably wondering if
anyone was
ever going to notice and help him.
You’re donating
proceeds to the AMERICAN FOUNDATION FOR SUICIDE PREVENTION. How did
that
association begin?
We contacted them. DAVID was bipolar and initially we
started thinking of the bipolar aspect of that and making donations in
that
direction. I was watching COUNTRY MUSIC TELEVSION one morning and there
was a video
that came on by RASCAL FLATS and they had a song called ‘WHY’. It’s a
song a
about suicide and it was aired as an extended public service
announcement. When
I saw that song, I thought that it was fine song and that it was a nice
performance but the message that they put into it was sort of
completely wrong
based on my experience with suicide. That caused me to look around for
organizations that worked with suicide prevention so I called the
AMERICAN
FOUNDATION FOR SUICIDE PREVENTION and talked to some of their people
and they
were also not very happy with the way that that RASCAL FLATS video came
out. So
I talked with them about the possibility of doing a video that would
have a set
of information geared toward what they thought would be the right kind
of
message. We’re actually still working on that project now. We’re not
finished
with it yet but in the course of working with them I got to know some
of the
people over there a little bit and decided that it was a good
organization and
one that we would like to support in anyway that we could. That was how
that
came about.
What advice do you
have for someone who has lost someone to suicide?
That’s a tough one! I think that ever situation could be a
little different. I think you should forgive them and forgive yourself.
I think
‘forgiveness’ is the operative word. Forgive them for what they felt
that they
had to do and forgive yourself if you feel as if you had let them down.
We all
make mistakes and so on but forgiveness is the most important word to
keep in
mind.
What would you like a
person to come away thinking about after they’ve heard the album?
If someone hears the CD and they know someone who is maybe
contemplating suicide, just try to understand that you need to look
deeper. The
songs on this CD are a glimpse inside of the mind of someone who has
very
intense suicidal thoughts for the most part. Many of the songs are
about that
and if you know the story behind that you can hear that. One of the
slogans
that the AMERCIAN FOUNDATION FOR SUICIDE PREVENTION is using is ‘Listen
Harder!’ Pay attention! If
you know
someone who had made serious threats of committing suicide, pay
attention! It’s
deep stuff that goes on in the mind and
you have to pay a little more attention. Hopefully some of those songs
will get
other people to listen to
BRiAN
LUSH (FOUNDER,
EDiTOR-iN-CHiEF)
