Chris Crofton
Hello It's Me is out now! Order on Bandcamp or from the Arrowhawk Shop.
"UFO Hunters" featuring Jim James
"rootsy existentialist banger... Clear-headed, Crofton crystallizes the duality of heartache, knowing life marches cruelly on despite personal setbacks, but wants to simmer in the pain just a little longer. UFO hunters — just like those who sit in the silent of aftermath of losing something precious — scan stars, desperate to glimpse a promising, borderline delusional pattern. A robust guitar riff — reminiscent of the same one that opens Guided by Voices' "Hold On Hope" — gently bleeds into sailing sounds of isolation, Crofton crooning, "They're searching the sky / I'm staring at my phone. ... simple strums bloom into a fully-formed opus" - NPR Music
"Akin to the intimate folk rock of Cass McCombs and Kevin Morby with touches of Jackson Browne and John Denver, 'UFO Hunters' is a warm and embracing number meant to be heard around the campfire. With the assistance of My Morning Jacket’s Jim James on guitar, Crofton brilliantly bridges introspection with existential contemplation." - The Revue
"The sweet and melancholy tune draws a parallel between someone looking for a human connection and someone watching for signs of extraterrestrial life. It's about maintaining hope, even if you don't have much evidence." - Nashville Scene
"...a sublime moment of escapism... Downbeat, wistful, and unquestionably very beautiful, UFO Hunters is the sound of overcoming your demons, discovering who you truly are, and making the most impressive music you possibly can." - For the Rabbits
John Denver, Bread, The Carpenters, Gordon Lightfoot — “Those are artists I listen to, and I listen to it them because the melodies are fuckin’ strong as shit,” That’s the case singer-songwriter Chris Crofton makes for the influences he draws from on his shockingly earnest new album Hello, It’s Me.
The album showcases an honest, vulnerable Chris Crofton, a renaissance man who cut his teeth as a comedian, musician and actor in New York City, before making a name for himself in his adopted dual hometowns of Nashville and Los Angeles. He’s also a man full of aesthetic contrasts and contradictions, whose love for Reagan-era chart-topper Lionel Richie is rivaled by that of Washington D.C. DIY post-hardcore flagbearers Fugazi.
“I like really sentimental music — I’m really sentimental — and I also like stuff that makes you wanna overthrow the government,” he says.
There is a dedicated cult of fans who love Crofton for his work as an edgy stand-up comedian. Vulgar, acutely analytical, swaggering, and self-deprecating - as a comic Crofton takes on topics ranging from bad sex, political and cultural decline and gluten-fueled urban gentrification. His razor-sharp wit and trademark curmudgeonly delivery have seen him sharing stages with party rockers Deer Tick and fellow funnymen like Neil Hamburger, Scott Thompson and Bob Odenkirk. He's acted as well, onstage in NYC experimental theater ptoductions, and in TV and film roles for projects as diverse as CMT’s sitcom Still the King and director Harmony Korine’s Trash Humpers. AND Crofton has a regular gig as the advice columnist for Music City alternative weekly publication the Nashville Scene.
Crofton’s former Nashville-based power-rock outfit the Alcohol Stuntband, which channeled not-so-easy-listening influences like AC/DC, The Jesus Lizard and Fugazi, was also complicated. Punked-out anthems that seemed to celebrate dysfunctional relationships, drug-fueled all-nighters and hard drinking are actually revved-up blues exercises, describing the terrible consequences of that lifestyle.”
Onstage, and eventually offstage as well, Crofton realized he was hiding behind a persona, saying he was doing his “best Bon Scott” as a way of masking who he really was — an insecure alcoholic from Connecticut. “I used to call myself the Alcohol Stuntman,” he recalls. “It’s plain as the nose on my face that I was in a character, and I was protecting myself from something."
“I used to think that I could change the world with dirty rock songs,” Crofton continues. “But I feel like, really, love songs, if they’re genuine, hold more importance...Those songs remind me that what is at the bottom of everything is love and sincere relationships.”
At this point there’s little that could come out of Crofton’s mouth that his followers might find shocking, save perhaps for an album stacked track to track with unapologetically romantic, gorgeously heartfelt, sweetly and vulnerably crooned, punchline-free ballads about heartbreak and how finding and losing love is what makes a man feel alive.
“This record is the outcome of getting sober for me, because it’s the first time I was able to make a clear-headed, predetermined piece of art,” Crofton says, explaining how, in 2014, he penned focused, tonally singular 10-song set capturing his headspace at a time when sobering up saved his life, while a pivotal relationship had dissolved in the process.
“Once I wasn’t drinking I was...back to my young self,” he recalls. “Toward the end of my drinking I realized I was gradually becoming a stereotype - and possibly a statistic…I was falling apart. I had gotten really lost. And then I had this wonderful relationship that didn’t work out, but during that relationship I quit drinking, and then when the relationship ended I was able to write the first adult songs I ever wrote. These are those songs.”
Of those songs, Crofton’s most proud of the twinkling, string-section-boasting “It’s all My Fault,” a reflective, ending-credits-to-sad-love-story confessional the singer says is the a better song than he’d ever thought he could write. “It’s the prettiest song I ever wrote. That’s what I felt I’d been working up to for 15 years.” It’s also worth noting that Crofton wrote the opening line, “Hello, It’s Me,” to the album’s title track a few years before pop superstar Adele did. “She got it out first because she probably had her life together better [than I did],” Crofton jokes.
Crofton cut the album in an inspired two-day session at Louisville’s La La Land Recording Studio with producer Kevin Ratterman. He was backed by a trio of Nashville cats: drummer Matt Hearn (Bully), bassist (and brother-in-law) Dave Dawson and keyboardist James “Matt” Rowland (Jamie Lidell.) The recordings were rounded out by guest vocalist Katie Toupin (Houndmouth) and lead guitar from My Morning Jacket’s Jim James and Houndmouth’s Matt Myers. They had to work fast, as Crofton was plotting a move from Nashville to L.A. at the time. Ratterman, best known for his work with the likes of My Morning Jacket, Ray LaMontagne, White Reaper and many others, had previously produced two Alcohol Stuntband records, so he certainly didn’t expect a sober Crofton to show up on his studio doorstep with an acoustic guitar and a set of stunning soft rock songs.
But the producer was happy to oblige Crofton in making Hello ‘s should-be-hits. The wistful, depressively whimsical “UFO Hunters,” the barroom-ready waltz “Find Me in the Bar,” and the lonely country weeper “Numbers Game” glimmer with an open, Laurel Canyon-ready resplendence that makes them sound at home alongside the ’70s, AM-radio-gold, countrypolitan story songs of Neil Diamond and John Denver - staples that the singer fondly remembers listening to on car rides with mom as a kid. “That music is burned on my brain,” he says. “It still takes me to a very wide-eyed place.”
“I’m a romantic person,” Crofton goes on, noting how, even at his most debauched, his true sentimental side was only barely buried beneath the surface. “I sat in the same smoky bar with a whiskey and a pint in front of me, listening to Rod Stewart’s version of ‘First Cut Is the Deepest’ on the jukebox for, like, eight years straight in the 1990s thinking I was the star of the world’s saddest movie - and I loved it. I romanticize everything. At its worst, this leads to acting like Charles Bukowski, and I think at its best it means trying to communicate love in a way that you think maybe will reach people.”
Hello, It’s Me shows Chris Crofton at his best.
The folks who joined Chris in the making of this album:
Jim James of My Morning Jacket (guitar)
Matt Myers (guitar) & Katie Toupin (vocals) from Houndmouth
Matt Rowland (Kacey Musgraves, Rayland Baxter, Bobby Bare Jr., Caitlin Rose)
Matt Hearn - drummer (Bully)
Scott Moore - strings (My Morning Jacket, Jim James)
Produced by Kevin Ratterman
Mastered by Shelly Anderson (Black Lab Mastering)
