Thanks to Scott Sharrard for letting me know about the documentary on Chris Whitley called Dust Radio: A Film About Chris Whitley (2017) [1:35 available on YouTube.
The film starts with some great quotes about Chris taken from the interviews conducted…
“He could have been a blues player from the Forties or he could have been this rock and roll guy from the Nineties.”
“There is not a guitarist alive that was not blown away by his guitar playing.”
“He used to like to go to the edge of the world, and just look over.”
“His voice was the most haunting thing.”
“It was something that people never heard before.”
“Whatever setting it was, Chris just brought it. Every night, every time.”
“Chris chose to be difficult… He drew a hard line between giving his music to others and making them come get it. He is a much more cryptic artist than the times knew.”
“His phrasing on guitar and singing were very complementary in a one of a kind way.”
“He made real soul music.”
In May 2002, Dave Thompson brought me to see Chris Whitley for the first time at Joe’s Pub in NYC (click here for that story).
In the movie it is clear that Chris Whitley is a unique bird. Reminds me of Ginger Baker. One mad cat.
His early days in music were spent playing around Kelly’s Guitar Shop on Bleeker Street in Greenwich Village during the Eighties when he used a sawed off old bicycle handlebar as his guitar slide. After his first album and rude introduction to the music industry, Chris Whitley’s residency at the Ludlow Street Cafe had people hanging from the rafters.
In 1989 Daniel Lanois met Chris Whitley through a NYC photographer and convinced Chris to travel to his studio in New Orleans. With laser focus Whitley worked with a band Dan pulled together to help bring his music to life. His song “Living with the Law” was the first to start a groundswell of attention for this budding “genius” called the next Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Springsteen. He ended up more like Jaco Pastorius.
By 1991, Chris was one of the hottest new rock acts, the opening act for Tom Petty, and appeared on Dave Letterman and Jay Leno with the full on backing by Columbia Records. Although he had the world by the balls, the spotlight and “dog n pony” at every local radio station and Sony event were not for Chris. He was not made for a big tour, and it crushed him.
The video clips with his daughter Trixie was touching. She continues to blossom as passes by and reinvent herself as a wonderful unique musician in her own right.
After several difficult releases, Whitley was dropped from his record company and signed on with the independent Messenger Records to make the raw and celebrated solo “Dirt Floor” album in 1998.
He is one of the first musicians to have a DJ in his band. DJ Logic’s collaboration in 2001 on “Rockey House” was fresh and opened doors for others bringing the ones and twos to the rock stage.
Throughout the movie, clips from a 2005 interview presents Chris as a shadow of himself in a haunting candid video of him shirtless, smoking on a bare mattress with old time music playing in the background. Three months later he died of lung cancer. Whitley was 45 years old.
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