Turning Points: Christopher Owens

Anyone familiar with the songs of Christopher Owens will know that he truly wears his heart on his sleeve. Whether it be the tragic romance of the records he released with his former band Girls, or the courageous honesty of his more recent solo material, Owens is unflinchingly sincere in a way that can seem almost out of place in an age of post-modern irony.

Owens eventually started writing songs when he was 28, although he’d experienced a peculiar relationship with music beforehand while growing up as a member of the controversial Christian sect ‘The Children of God’. After making a clean break from the strict cult, Owens embraced a turbulent lifestyle which led to him forming Girls, a band some would consider to be one of the most underrated rock ‘n’ roll groups in recent years. As he readies his second solo album, A New Testament, we caught up with Chris to talk about his amazing journey.

I am considered part of the first generation that were born into the Children of God. I started learning to play guitar around age 12. We would sometimes go out and busk in public as part of a way of supporting our commune, so that was a way of seeing the outside world and it contributed to my desire to leave. I would see kids a couple years older than me doing what they wanted to do. My sister and her boyfriend, who were both also born and raised in the Children of God had moved to Amarillo, Texas and I followed.

Life in Texas was sort of aimless. I didn’t have any kind of ambition apart from assimilating into normal American life. To smoke cigarettes, have friends and be normal. I met Stanley Marsh, a local artist, businessman and multi-millionaire. He offered me a job within about 20 minutes and I said no. I was going to hitchhike to New York to paint oil on canvas on the sidewalk and become a famous painter [laughs]! The fourth or fifth time he asked, “Wouldn’t you rather go to New York with 500 dollars in your pocket?” I said, “OK, good point.” I agreed to take a job for a week, a week turned into four years, he became my best friend and my source of education.

When I moved to San Francisco [Holy Shit! frontman] Matt Fishbeck just sort of latched on to me at a party. It turned into a three day hang out, which ended with us singing karaoke with our shirts off playing tambourines. By the end of it he said “OK, you know you’re a part of Holy Shit! now?” The next time I heard from him he said “We’ve been booked to play a festival and you’re gonna be the keyboard player.” So I learned all their songs on the keyboard. By the time we got to the festival I was the drummer. I have no idea how that happened.

[In between gigs] I started making demos and they just turned into Girls songs. All of a sudden I’d bought a guitar and a cassette recorder and I had started to record Summertime and Lust for Life, songs which would end up on the Girls album. [Girls bassist and producer] JR came round one night to listen to what I’d been doing and thought it was cool. So we thought we’d just go for it, we just put in a hundred dollars each and bought this half decent eight track recording machine from somebody on Craigslist. We put out a demo and people just assumed we were a band.

I didn’t want that band to end, we had a good group together recording the second album, but three of them had left by the end of recording. It wasn’t because I had wanted them to leave. Either they wanted out or somebody else wanted them out and that was kinda the last straw for me. I just thought “This is going nowhere.” At the same time though I wasn’t pulling the plug out of frustration. I’d always had a desire to write as my own person.