Chris Forsyth
“THE guitar is like a puzzle,” muses Chris Forsyth, zooming in from an airy cabin in Upstate New York, where his wife Maria Dumlao has an artist’s residency. “I don’t think you ever really figure it out. But it’s important to punch through and find other things, to keep it interesting. Like any relationship, if it stagnates then it becomes less rewarding.”
Forsyth cut his teeth on the New York avant-garde scene of the late ’90s and early ’00s, where rock was a dirty word. But slowly he found his way back, via an enduring love for the work of Richards Thompson and Lloyd; he credits his renewed enthusiasm for the guitar to a period spent studying with the Television legend. Eventually reverting to something approaching a classic rock-band lineup – minus the egotistical frontman – Forsyth retains a nose for adventure and a determination to take rock music somewhere new without abandoning its core principles.
“I’m always trying to reconcile these two sides of my brain,” he admits. “There’s a great Eno quote where he says experimental music is like the North Pole: I like to know it’s there, it enriches what I do, but I’d much rather live in the South of France. I feel that way about both extremes. Jazz, rock, blues, anything can become this regimented, predictable thing that gets frozen in amber or put in the museum, and then it’s supposed to not change. And that’s despicable to me. It’s got to be alive, and being alive means changing.”
CHRIS FORSYTH PARANOID CAT
FAMILY VINEYARD, 2011
After a decade or more in
