Connor Christian

By Michael Aguilar; photo by Jason Reed

If the early- to mid-1990s were the primetime for a bandana-wearing, gun-toting, gang-affiliated, gold-chain- sporting rapper to maintain his street credibility, than the mid- to late-2000s are the primetime for tight-jean-wearing, manpurse-toting, non-affiliated, thick-rim-glasses-sporting indie bands to maintain their indie credibility.

Well, Connor Christian has one thing to say to those indie bands.

“Enjoy your credibility in your basement bro. It’ll be awesome for you,” he laughs. “You can be as snobby and as indie and as awesome as you want for your eight friends at The EARL on Monday night. Awesome.”

After “moving out” from his parents’ home when he was 14, Christian has traveled and traversed the music world, garnering experience that belies someone much older than Christian’s 29 years.

Christian has fronted in a heavy rap/rock group called 8Bus and, as Christian describes it, “a real 311 ripoff, whiteboy, fratboy rap/rock” group called GruvnHi. After the first band dissipated and the second crashed and burned in the way of all prima-donna rock groups, Christian went into the acoustic duo cover business and then went solo. All of that before founding the band Princess that eventually evolved into the musical group that now bears Christian’s name.

Christian and his new band, self-categorized as rock/country/ reggae but sounding more like if Hootie and the Blowfish incorporated some harder rock, spent the next four years, from 2004 until now, following a simple formula for touring, or, as Christian says, “paying the bills.”

They would play anywhere and everywhere, spending 200-250 nights on the road for all four years, performing well over 1000 shows, playing anything and everything that anyone wanted to hear, including cover tunes that most indie bands are not willing to stoop to.

“By the fourth or fifth time we play somewhere we’ll play one or two covers, maybe we’ll play a Johnny Cash tune and ‘The Devil Went Down to Georgia,’” Christian explains. “That’ll be it, we’ve been there five or six times and people are used to hearing us and we’ve kind of weaned them off of the covers.”

Now, after signing with Vintage Earth Music, Christian is preparing to release his new album 90 Proof Lullabies in October and is finally at a point that he has been striving for since early on in his career.

“This is the first time that I’ve had both a label and creative control over things,” Christian says. “So it’s definitely a huge step in the right direction.”

Spurred on by his relationship with Kenneth Green, now an employee of Vintage Earth Music and a former member of 8Bus, Christian and his band bought into the ideal philosophy of Vintage Earth Music.

“[Green] wants to really create a new paradigm for how musicians and the label can kind of work in concert. Instead of always butting heads and trying to screw each other over a dollar,” he says. “If we do it the right way then we keep the overhead low and really concentrate on keeping the fans happy then there’s enough money for everybody.”

Vintage Earth Music is offering Christian and company national distribution and an opening spot for a nationally touring act. To Christian, this is the chance that all those nights of touring and all of those bland cover gigs has been building to all along.

“Some nights will bring you to tears they are so bad. You’ll be playing and you’ll just be killing it and people will be ignoring you,” Christian remembers. “You suck it up and you have shitty nights and you have nights where go out there and you’re sick and you’ve got to sing anyway ... You pay your dues, that’s kind of how it works in any business.”

Christian, a professed fan of Roman lore, particularly the literature of the B.C. years, finds a perfect parallel between the contrasts of his career and the contrasts of the B.C./A.D. system.

“I would say that everything that has happened to me up to now has been the B.C. years,” Christian says. “And now we’re at zero and we’re finally even and everything is alright.”

Christian spent four years destroying his “indie cred” by working hard and doing what the people wanted. All while slowly showing them what they deserved.

And now, he’s finally counting up.

www.connorchristian.com