The Guitar Player's Resource
Chris Fury: I've always been into music and started playing the viola when I was elementary school. My parents bought me my first guitar when I was 12, but it wasn't until years later when I got serious about playing. By high school I was really inspired by a friend who was really good at guitar, and we would jam and we started our first band together. From the first moment we wrote our first song I was hooked and I knew it was something I wanted to do the rest of my life. I went to college and got my music degree from Binghamton University and then started piecing together songs that eventually came together on my debut album "From Darkness".
Chris Fury: My solo debut album "From Darkness" just released May 25th and it is self-released! It was always my intention to self-release the album. This is the same business model that Steve Vai used. He spent all of his own money recording his first album and leveraged it to get his bigger gigs (Frank Zappa, David Lee Roth, etc.) I also think in this day and age it's much easier to get your music out there, especially with the internet.
Chris Fury: Picture Rage Against the Machine grooves, Red Hot Chili Peppers funk, some rougher edges like Metallica and some sweeter jazzier moments, all topped with some "furious" leads, ala Joe Satriani, Steve Vai and Eric Johnson.
Chris Fury: "From Darkness" is my first solo musical appearance so I wanted to make an original statement in the world of instrumental guitar. I wanted the listener to recognize that immediately when they first listen to the album so the first track "The Nexus" starts off with a frenetic intro and hits into a hard rock groove. The album then progresses into some funk rock and acoustic landscapes. The softer side of me is displayed in the ballad "In Your Eyes" which is a song I wrote for my wife. The album then picks up the pace and ends with some heavy hitters. The last song "Mystical Journey" sums up the whole album and asks the question, "Where to go from here?"
Chris Fury: Of course, there's nothing like playing live! Right now my band, the Chris Fury Trio, consists of drummer Chris Markwood and bassist Ian Underwood. Ian recorded all the bass you hear on the album and graduated from Berklee School of Music. They are both top-notch musicians. We just performed at Revolution in Amityville, New York for the "From Darkness" CD release show on May 25th and we have some other dates coming up.
Chris Fury: Well the main hub of what I do is on my website www.chrisfury.com. I'm also on Facebook, Twitter and Youtube.
Chris Fury: The main promotional and publicity command station that showcases everything that I do is my website www.chrisfury.com. It's always been the case and isn't going away unlike various social media sites! Think of MySpace and other social media websites that are no more. Although social media can be great to connect with fans, who knows when Facebook or Twitter will disintegrate? My advice to other musicians would be to not put all your eggs in one basket, especially if you don't own that basket!
Chris Fury: Well there's the saying that "music expresses what words cannot" which I believe is true. It leaves interpretation up to the listener. Of course an instrumental song can be about something, but a listener can get something completely different out of the experience than intended and can relate to the music in more ways that one. In some way vocals pigeonhole the songs theme. This is because there are only finite words to describe something. In the world of instrumental music, there are infinite possibilities and the music touches all the in between emotions that you cannot express with words.
Chris Fury: I listen to everything, anything that keeps me inspired. Growing up it was a lot of '90s rock bands, and I was really into Metallica and gradually started listening to heavier bands. Some of my favorite bands have captured a unique sound you can only obtain by listening to them like 311, Rage Against the Machine, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Incubus, etc. A lot of these bands mix various genres in their music and I've always been into that hybrid sound. Believe it or not I've worked with various hip-hop artists who want to do that rock meets hip-hop sound, most notably Keith Murray (Def Jam).
Chris Fury: Many more shows and Youtube videos to come! I shot a music video for the first track of the album titled "The Nexus" that's going to be released soon. I'm looking to go on tour in support of "From Darkness" late summer and fall 2014.
Brooklyn-based Chris Fury fronts his own instrumental rock guitar band, the Chris Fury Trio, a band which delivers an eclectic taste of progressive rock, fusion, blues and jazz elements with the guitar in the forefront. Fury's 2014 full-length debut release "From Darkness" is comprised of thirteen instrumental emotional tracks, each telling a story within and showcasing his command of the instrument. The CD was written over a period of five years, with some of the earliest ideas coming from his college dorm.
Dan McAvinchey touched base with Fury, as he tells of his early influences, his band, social media and more.