I grew up in Asheboro, North Carolina. My Dad was a musician. He played guitar and bass and, though he didn’t really sing anymore by the time I was around, I was told he was a pretty good singer once as well. I believe it may have been him who told me that, but I can believe it. He loved music more than the average person and I grew up listening to stacks of records that he would pull out and want me to hear in an effort to educate me. Which I was okay with because I also love music. He taught me to play bass, and we played together with his brother, my uncle, in a band for most of my teenage years. He took me several times to a regular blues jam at his friend’s bar in Greensboro, which to this day stands as one of my most significant musical memories. I learned a lot of lessons there, from musicians who were probably about my age now back when I was 16 years old playing through the blues canon with them.
I think I got my love of reading from my Mom. There were always lots of books in the house. She would read to me every night when I was very young. The Phantom Toll Booth. The Hobbit. Ghost Tales of the Uwharries. I would also request an occasional encyclopedia entry as a bedtime story. Which was weird I guess, but she would oblige. Often I’d be interested in hearing about something a little spooky, like an entry on vampires. I can still remember the smell of those World Book pages.
I started trying to write my own stories when I was probably 8 or 9. I started trying to write my own songs when I was about 15 or 16. I met some musicians my own age in high school and started a band.
I moved to Asheville when I was almost 19 and went to UNCA. I met some lifelong friends there. I played in lots of bands. I studied music and recording. I wrote some off-color essays. Wrote some short stories. Wrote a bunch of songs. A handful of them I still play today. None of the essays or stories survive. Although, there might be a floppy disk around here somewhere…
I moved to Brooklyn to go to law school in 2009. I forgot about being a musician for a couple of months. Then I remembered and starting going to an open mic at Bar 4 in South Slope. Bar 4 doesn’t exist anymore, but that open mic was really special. I met some of my favorite people there. More life long friends. I started performing solo on an acoustic guitar more often. Wrote a lot more songs. I finished law school, passed the NY bar exam, but never became a lawyer. I still play a lot of the songs that I wrote around that time. They have proved more useful than the law degree. I regret none of it.
I started this wordpress site as a joke. I spent a couple weeks promoting my first real show at Bar 4 by telling everyone that my performance was not going to be a set of songs, but that instead I would be eating a guitar live on stage. I posted blog entries about my training process leading up to the show. I didn’t eat a guitar, I just played some songs. But a friend did make a guitar shaped cake which we brought to the bar and shared with everyone at the show. Then I just sort of used this as the place for regular updates about shows, recording projects, my thoughts on local political issues, my reviews of online reviews, my thoughts about my friends’ records. Around 2015 I mostly stopped posting things here. Though there was the occasional exception for E.W. Harris records.
I’ve removed most of those old posts, but I’ve kept a few here as scraps of nostalgic ephemera.
In 2019 I moved to Athens, Ohio. I met more friends, I started playing in another band, and I continued to write songs and stories. The songs I share from time to time. The stories I have mostly kept to myself.
In 2026 I decided to start posting things on here again. Specifically, a regular combination of tea tasting notes, odes to fruit, and transcriptions of a handful of cryptic messages that I found stuffed between items throughout the aisles of a Walmart Superstore.
(HOME.)
Eat That Guitar Chris Michael! 