Sometimes, it takes surrendering to a moment. A space. A vibe. A certain barren expanse that by its very emptiness invites a world of possibility. In Chris Kasper's case, it's about suspending the preconceived.
For the Manayunk-based singer-songwriter and musician, it's often that very letting go – and a willing curiosity about what comes next – that gives rise to a greater creativity.
Kasper, for instance, didn't know why he was drawn to use the illustration, "Flying Boy," by artist Rob Donnelly, as the cover art for his last CD. Nor did he know why he wanted the same title for the disc. Yet going into the studio in Durham, N.C., where "FlyingBoy" was recorded, he found that both somehow permeated the songs, setting a tone for the album that would prove ultimately satisfying.
"It all added to this very atmospheric type of sound," says Kasper, who wrote two of the nine songs while in the studio recording, finishing most of them there as well. "I didn't want this to be mindless jamming or cookie-cutter stuff. I wanted it to be original songs that sounded familiar. Being down there and doing this all by myself, not playing with a live band, it all kind of organically came about."
Kasper had been on the jam band circuit for a while before moving from West Virginia to the Philadelphia area five years ago where he initially still played with other bands before stumbling upon the singer-songwriter scene that inspired him to push for something more.
"The more I got out to see music other than jam bands and stuff – people like Amos Lee – something clicked in my head and I thought, 'This is what I should be doing, getting out and trying to build songs myself,' " says Kasper, who performs Sunday at Dawson Street Pub in Manayunk. "I think I didn't feel nearly as fulfilled playing in the background setting. Subconsciously, I always had this songwriting thing I was doing and I just never tapped into it until I came here."
He recorded "FlyingBoy" in North Carolina because a friend trying to get a studio off the ground there invited him to come down and make an album.
"I think there was almost other powers at work that kind of led me down there," says Kasper. "It was just me and James Lee down there and being in a different environment and out of the big city, it definitely added to a different mind frame and I think that comes across in the songs. It would have been much more polished and less on a homegrown level (if recorded in the city)."
Although his first album, "Trust the Tale, Not the Teller," recorded while he was still in college in West Virginia, garnered impressive praise – the cut "Favorite Highway" won best song at the inaugural Mountain Stage NewSong Festival in 2002 &8211; Kasper says the disc fell short of his vision for it, something he has rectified with "FlyingBoy."
A rootsy, rhythmic collection of warm, graceful melodies and deft acoustic stylings burnished in bluegrass and folk influences, the album is both quiet and quietly galvanizing, up-tempo toe-tappers complementing the gauzy impressionistic ballads that showcase Kasper's sweetly fluid vocals.
"I didn't go in thinking, 'It has to be like this or sound like that,' " he says, of the recording process. "When you're writing new songs and hearing them come to life, it adds a great joy to making a record, as opposed to having old songs you've been sitting on and hearing them one way and you can't get them down the way you hear them in your head. That can be more frustrating than being open to how the songs come through."
For the 30-year-old, that kind of receptivity is where the magic happens, even if it isn't every day, though he sits down with his guitar every morning to write.
"I'm not trying to prove myself as a singer-songwriter. I'm not trying to wow people with big choruses," says Kasper, who recently signed a distribution deal with indie label B.O.S. Music. "Even if it's quirky or awkward, if it sounds original and not offensive to the ear, I just go with it. It doesn't have to be, 'Here's a verse and a chorus.' There are strange patterns people fall into or try and conform to. I try and avoid any type of conformity."
For a while, though, he had his doubts, at least when it came to choosing music as a career. Growing up in Hartford, Conn., the second oldest of six kids, Kasper came from a musical family. His dad plays mandolin, guitar and piano, and as a youngster, he and his siblings would make up silly songs and jam together.
"I remember cutting a guitar out of a cardboard box and playing along to the Young Rascals. My dad was a big fan of Young Rascals and I was playing to 'Good Lovin' ' and thinking, 'Why doesn't everybody play guitar?'
"When you're young, the easiest stuff to do is play loud and obnoxious music. So I got into punk music and the louder stuff. When I got into college and started seeing live bands, that really changed me. When I saw a band jamming, the audience was just as much a part of what was happening as the band was and there was this amazing fusion of energy that I couldn't ignore. People were just lost in the music and I never really realized the power that music could have until then."
From his first open mic performance, he was hooked on that transfer of energy. He had already begun writing songs, "A girl broke up with me and I needed to release something and I started writing songs out of sadness," he admits and so although he finished school with a degree in psychology, he found he couldn't avoid the pull of music.
Already, he has shared festival bills with the likes of Bela Fleck and Keller Williams and been an opener for Amos Lee. He even toured Europe, relying on a strong do-it-yourself work ethic to build momentum – as well as a philosophy that he acknowledges may not be too smart.
"I was very naive as to how to build a reputation as a musician," says Kasper, who also plays with original bluegrass band The Lowlands – which is on hiatus – and jam band Groove Depot. "I'd see a poster or a very attractive postcard or flier or hear about somebody on the radio or hear about people talking about someone and go see them and they would not be all they were cracked up to be. There's this image thing with people trying to become popular before their voice is ever really found. It's like a drive to get people to know who they are that takes over.
"But I think if your music's good, people are going to hear about it and you don't have to do much. You know, even if you see a show and someone's good right off the bat, if you're not rooted in something really stable and really deep, it's going to be a fleeting moment. You're not going to sink your foot into the ground and stay for a while.
"It all comes back to being an artist and constantly creating and being in a state of becoming and never saying, 'I've arrived.' "
