Today we’d like to introduce you to Chris Hart.
Hi Chris, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I’ve been a musician since I was nine or ten years old. I started playing guitar after the first time I played the game “Guitar Hero”, which I think is a more common story than guitar players care to admit. I learned how to play drums in middle and high school, and then I picked up bass and piano after that. I didn’t study music in college, which I do really regret, but at the time music was more of a hobby than it is now. I studied hospitality and event planning and worked in the concert industry when I moved to Atlanta after I graduated in 2018. I did that for two years and then got laid off from my job during the first spike of COVID-19 in May 2020. You can’t have events if everyone is locked down, so I saw it coming! I knew that it was going to be a while before I could do that kind of work again so I decided to start spending more time trying to pursue my passion and make my own music. I started posting clips of me playing guitar on Instagram and got positive feedback, then decided to maybe try and release some of my own music on Spotify and Apple Music. I learned how to record, produce, and mix music, and since then I’ve released a 6-song instrumental album and two singles with me singing. Now I routinely play with bands and by myself around Atlanta, and my third single “Are You There?” is available on all streaming services now!
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
Definitely not! And I’m still very much in the beginning of my career. I think the main struggle for me is that in order to be a musician in this day and age, I have to also be a “content creator”, which I, and a lot of musicians like me, don’t really know how to do. Some people take to that challenge really easily and know how to make social media work for them and then there’s others who struggle with it and just want to play music and write songs. You start to see why big artists have whole marketing and social media teams to do that kind of thing for them! I think trying to balance learning how to promote my songs with actually writing the music and getting better at songwriting is the hardest thing for me.
I didn’t think I would turn into an entrepreneur but I kind of became one as a musician. There are thousands of people trying to do exactly what I’m trying to do, so you have to get pretty good at distinguishing yourself from others. Do you play a lot of instruments? Are you really good at video editing? Are you funny? Are you teaching people something? You have to figure out what people like about you and lean into it. I’m still trying to figure that out. I’ve started my Instagram and TikTok pages over from scratch in the past year because I wasn’t getting the results I wanted. I was trying a lot of different things and nothing was sticking, and I realized I was being inconsistent. So now I’m operating both pages in the style that I am more comfortable with. It’s all been a huge learning experience.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I’m a singer, songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist. For the past two years, I mainly been playing guitar with a few groups and singers around Atlanta. I’ve played with Willis the Lion, Dri Jack, and Lanre to name a few. I’m kind of an independent contractor. Artists call me when they need a guitar player for any kind of show and I try to make myself available. It’s mostly R&B, hip-hop and soul music. I think people know me for that style. Although now that I’m writing my own music, I’m making a little faster-tempo, pop-style music.
I think what sets me apart from other players is that I try really hard not to be selfish when I’m playing. No one likes a guitar player who wants to play solos all the time and is just wailing on the guitar while the singer is performing. I’ll do that when I’m asked to do it, but otherwise I just like to add to the whole group. I play with a lot of really talented musicians and even though I’ve become good friends with a lot of them, I want them to know that I recognize how good they are and I’m always trying to prove that I belong with them. I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes, especially on stage. I think the fact that I make my own music makes me more attuned with what’s going on with the rest of the band while I’m performing. I’m listening for what the others are doing so I can match them, especially when we’re jamming a little on stage and doing something we haven’t rehearsed. I’m paying more attention to what’s going on with the other members than to what I’m playing. It’s a give and takes thing. But from being a producer of my own music, you notice more when something is sticking out so I try my best to not be the cause of that.
Let’s talk about our city – what do you love? What do you not love?
I love the pride people take in living here. Every neighborhood has a different feel to it, but it’s distinctly Atlanta, especially in the older neighborhoods that haven’t been built up yet. The majority of people are very proud to be in Atlanta. I didn’t grow up in a big city. I lived about an hour or so north of Miami my whole childhood, so I had never experienced that energy. It’s different here. I like seeing how active people are in their communities and neighborhoods and how people are always trying to improve them. A lot of people care about Atlanta and improving the city while also respecting its history.
What I dislike about the city is essentially the opposite of that. There are also a lot of people here who don’t really care about the well-being of other people or the city as a whole. You see a lot of trash on the street, profane graffiti, homeless people who aren’t getting the support they need. I live right by I-20 and hear people speeding down the highway every night and I think that’s really dangerous and selfish. I know these are problems in most cities in the US unfortunately, but I wish that people in general had more care for where they live and treated people with respect.
Contact Info:
- Email: ChrisRHartMusic@gmail.com
- Website: https://beacons.ai/chrishart
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/chris.hart.music
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU_kPMFKawCFIsiynnw6npA
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6ZJYq3x6ldGADsXPgTp17D
Image Credits
Katie Hart
