Chrisâ debut album gives listeners vulnerable, reflective music and pop anthems you would expect to hear in big arenas across the nation.

12 MP3 Songs
POP: Power Pop, ROCK: Modern Rock



Details:
CSB had been together, in varying forms, for the better part of 10 years. With this album Brian Harrison-drums, Sonny Larsen-bass, and myself sought to accumulate the best of those years and put them on an album. The total tally was 12 songs. Collectively they became known as âHolding on to Venus.â

Iâm a big fan of finding a pattern, or a theme, or a concept when given a collection of songs. I find this theme or concept to be extremely revealing when going through the process of resolving the track order.

When I started looking at the lyrical content of the songs for Venus, the theme that popped out to me was simply, âlove.â All the songs, I felt, discussed or painted a picture of different shades, temperaments and situations of love. The triumph, the longing songs, the desperation, the regret, they all seemed to find cohesion in this concept of love.

I started thinking of possible titles. It wasnât long into my search when I stumbled upon Venus, the Roman goddess of love. The thought occurred to me, the message needs to be something like, no matter what love has dealt me thus far, or no matter what lack of love situations Iâve found myself in, Iâm going to keep holding on to find real love. To me thatâs what âholding on to Venusâ means, holding on to the hope, that one day real love will find me.

The track ordering was a difficult task, mostly due to the fact there were quite a few slower or mellower songs in the collection, though we were known more as an energetic, power-pop band. At first I tried focusing on the musical aspect alone, fast song, medium song, slow song. The key was to put distance between the slowest songs on the album. I never found peace in any of the results using this method. So I changed my ways.

Next I tried to come up with a story line that would link all the songs together.

Before I tried to discover the story, I knew something was missing on the album. If this was to be an album revolving around the concept of love, the album had to have that timeless jazz crooner song, Thereâs something about those âtimelessâ crooners that conjure up the beauty of love when I listen to them: I was listening to the commentary from When Harry met Sally. Rob Reiner wanted a soundtrack that was timeless. He went with Harry Connick Jr. So after a bit of time, I worked up the progression on the guitar and started humming a melody line. I ended up calling it âTimeless.â This was the last song written for the album.