The Cult’s bassist Chris Wyse is on the phone from Indianapolis during a days break from his heavy touring band. Chris added the bass parts to the Cults masterful 2001 Beyond Good And Evil, before joining the Cult full time and it is not true you can’t learn something new every day.
Chris, who also fronts his own band, the surprisingly awesome Owl (a sort of metal Beak), is explaining his journey and it is really a study in a type of musician when I ask why he appears like both a session musician and a band player, “I always say to people I’m more of a band guy, I’m not really a session player although I’ve done a lot of sessions. That’s really true, I got into it for the camaraderie, the team work, and making something happen with a band. But I’ve worked with bands that are already established so basically you wanna honor what’s there, understand what’s there. If you were an actor you’d do a little research on the part, right? So I think that’s really important, to try and get in there and understand it. For me, that doesn’t mean I’m reading up or whatever. I just happen to understand a lot of these things because I am a musician that worked really hard when he was young so I have a background. I honor the gig but I also bring what I have to the table as well as much as possible when suited.”
That is really fascinating to me, because Chris is like an ultimate team player and yet, as he notes, he brings what he brings. And with the help of Canadian producer Bob Rock, he has played some truly excellent sessions. That’s Chris on the opening track of Mick Jagger’s much hated Goddess In The Doorway album, “Visions Of Paradise”. Jagger had a falling out with Jerry Duplessis. Later Jagger drove over to Chris’ home in the back of a stretch limo to thank him “Surreal” is Chris’ assessment.
Later that year, at the request of Rock, Chris auditioned for Metallica and appeared in their “Some Kind Of Monster” movie. “It was really nice of them to let me audition although they’d already decided on Robert (Trujillo). Rock just wanted to prove to the band that other people could get them the sound they wanted.”
I said earlier speaking to Chris was an education and he made one of the single most interesting points I’ve heard in a long time. In 1986 the legal drinking age was raised t0 21, Chris would have been 16 at the time, and he claims it got him out of New York to Los Angeles and fundamentally changed rock and roll and come to think of it, it must have aged rock and roll over night. I should have pursued the questions but wasn’t thinking fast enough.
In 2006 Chris joined the Cult full time (on touring with Against Me! during the Laura Grace Jane story eruption: “I didn’t care one way or another about any of that stuff, I just thought they were a great band. “) and today, the changes in the business world have changed the way the Cult conduct their business: “Money for the Cult is now from touring and as you can see we tour extensively and for Owl we are more in the process of building the house and people are coming. We’re just starting out.”
Owl were formed in 2007 with Chris on bass/vocals and childhood friends Dan Dinsmore – drums and Jason Achilles Mezilis – guitar / vocals. They released their OK but not much more eponymous debut with a good song “Charmed” in 2009 and this year the excellent The Right Thing. Chris: “I think we’re trying to put a lot more oxygen in it than a lot of bands, different things going on, different styles. Trying to be creative in a different way. Trying to do something a little different.”
At its best, the Celtic “Rover”, drums and bass “Eleven” Kinks cover “Destroyer”, and hardboiled “All Day” the album is a thrilling ride that is never quite where you think it is going to be. “For me it’s so much fun to have no boundaries really. We definitely try to get into the heavy genre at times,but we can almost skip over the metal and go right into the hardcore, hard rock or whatever. With the band at the same time I definitely got that kind of reaction like woah this is different. But the whole point of the album was to record different sounds and stretching the boundaries.”
“With Owl it’s not like anything goes in a sense like we don’t care, it just means we want to bring velocity and craft, we really enjoy what we do. We bring things that don’t even exist in other bands like the upright bass or the opportunity to do a Celtic song. It’s just like kind of a thing where I have the best of both worlds. Owl has a different function .
“‘Eleven’ is basically a drum and bass solo, that actually came together from a piece of music on the bass. And Jason placed a little piano on the top. Even the distorted part at the end is actually the bass, it sounds like a guitar because you’re used to feedback being off a guitar. But that’s me. That’s the one thing about New York when we play live I’ve noticed, the audience is like “whaaat” , they’re amazed by it sometimes because they didn’t even understand it till they saw it. ”
The Cult are playing Roseland on October 22nd but Chris thinks he will be able to get back to concentrating on Owl next year: “The first half of my year was consumed totally with Owl because we put out the record and there was an opportunity there for me to take advantage of the time with Owl because the Cult was off after an extensive run and new album. Last years album was well received global charts all over the world and stuff, that was called Choice Of Weapons . It’s a bit of a I have to be looking ahead to make sure everything is being done correct but there has been opportunities to continue. So we had the chance to work on Owl, metal, alternative rock type stuff. We had the Mercury Lounge show , the Bowery Electric show, all of them were selling out. Into next year we will seriously be thinking about touring a bit more.”
Owl are looking to play support and build a band for a better tomorrow. The odd thing about phoners is that all you have is a voice so speaking to Wyse there is something professional and Professorial about him, so who is this blonde bearded bad ass??? Undoubtedly, whoever Chris Wyse is, he is damn fine musician.