Oregon Music News

Chasman picks his custom-built 8-string guitar.

Some musicians protest by writing songs. Guitar virtuoso Paul Chasman walked away from music all together.

Chasman, a former Portland, now a resident of Port Angeles, Wash., is an acoustic picker of the highest order, one who sets few boundaries on his music, and one perhaps best known for his work with the Acoustic Guitar Summit, which features Chasman in concert with Mark Hanson, Terry Robb and Doug Smith. He is a player and composer who traffics as easily in jazz as he does classical, pop as easily as the blues. He’s as likely to find as much joy in playing the guitar music of “Man of La Mancha” as he does arranging Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love” for acoustic guitar.

Despite attempts by his mother, a concert pianist, to engage in the 88s, he was more drawn to the guitar, especially in the hands of one Elvis Aron Presley. “I was drawn to the guitar like a magnet,” he says. While visiting family friends, he saw a guitar and the host showed him a few chords. “I was in awe of it. My parents got me a guitar. I fell in love with it.”

Growing up in Los Angeles, he quickly passed through the rock-and-roll band phase and found LA’s Ash Grove club. “It was an incredible school for me,” he says. “Lightnin’ Hopkins was the first big blues guy that I was attracted to. I saw him there all the time.”

But it was folk legend Doc Watson who truly turned his head. “I’d see him at the Ash Grove. He was a really big influence, my musical dad.”

Chasman fell for jazz shortly thereafter and the music of Joe Pass. Pass’ series of solo improvisation recordings “opened my mind up to what could be done on solo guitar.”

After a miserable year in college, the 19-year-old Chasman stuck out his thumb and found his way to Portland and a community of musicians where he was able to play full time and teach. “I fell in love with the guitar all over again. I was playing full time for a number of years. Then when I was 21, I had a son. By 22 and a half, I was a single dad with an infant child.”

Chasman stretches his talents across all manner of music, and guitars

Chasman learned the business side of music teaching, which afforded him the time to spend with his son, as well as pursue his own musical pursuits. “At that point, after a lot of soul-searching,” he said, “I came to a conscious decision that yes, I have to play music for a living and for my life, and raise this kid – figure out a way to do both.”

Teaching gave him the ability to make a living. “It was my way of keeping my integrity to be able to play just only the music I wanted to play, to develop my own style and rely on teaching for income. The music is my own.”

Which is what he’s done for the last 30 years, writing, recording and playing concerts in a broad range of guitar styles and for a variety of orchestrations.

But a perfect storm hit him about the time the Bush administration took office at the turn of the millennium. Chasman had hit the wall with the guitar, finding audiences less and less discerning and more interested in speed and flash.  “I was getting unspired musically,” he says. “I’d been at it along time. I was frustrated with audiences, who only cared about louder and faster. It was feeling to me that the better I got, the better my music become, the more evolved I got, the less the audiences were interested in what I was doing. A lot of frustration building up.”

And then came the Bush years. Chasman, who’s father was an English teacher, had always written, never as a living. But as his frustration with music was growing, so too was fear that something vile was happening in Washington. And he walked away from music and picked up a pen. Drawing inspiration from Don Novello, the creative mind behind TV’s Father Guido Sarducci and the fictional Lazlo Toth, a character that drafted tongue-in-cheek letters to politicians and corporate heads and had them published, Chasman first wrote a satirical religious work called “The Book of Bob,” and began drafting letters to the likes of the Bush White House, Rush Limbaugh and Dr. Laura.

During that period, “I thought, ‘Where’s Laszlo when we need him?’” says Chasman. He wrote a letter to Bush under the nom de satire Carl Estrada and captured “The Carl Letters,” subtitled, ““Letters of Advice and Constructive Criticism to the Famous, the Infamous, and the Current Administration.”

“I wrote a letter a day for years,” he says. “After 2004 election, I had the feeling like I’d been kicked in the gut.

A personal backlash against the Bush administration and other social ills resulted in Chasman penning "The Book of Bob"

Chasman had gotten a bulk email from a religious fanatic named Bob. “A rant,” he says, “You know, ‘The right arm of the archangel Gabriel.’ That’s when ‘The Book of Bob’ was revealed to me. I started writing and couldn’t stop. At some point, I put the guitars down. I really had no desire to play for a couple of years. I was writing full time, putting my creative energy into writing. I didn’t feel like I was missing anything.”

So did the Ray-Ban-wearing men in black suits show up at his door? Were there repercussions for the fictional Carl Estrada or some kind of presidential reaction?

“Yeah!” he says. “The first thing that happened, my entire email address program crashed. I had a couple thousand emails names. It crashed one day, disappeared, never got it back. That’s a reaction! Then Bush sent me a whole packet of postcards, of the White House, Air Force One, their dog, all this stuff. But  the crown jewel, for my Carl Estrada career, was after I’d stopped writing for a bit, I started writing again during the Obama-McCain thing, writing a lot to McCain and Palin. I got a hand-writen letter from Sarah Palin’s dad, with an autographed picture, ‘Dear Carl, thank you so much for support.’”

Luckily for us there was hope and change. Chasman and his wife moved to Port Angeles and began to build a new home that his wife had designed. While living in a tiny studio during construction, “I was was sort of floundering,” he says. “Then this opportunity came up to play for a local production of ‘Man of La Mancha.’ I’d played the show before, and I’m not really  a musical fan, but that one I absolutely love. The guitar part is kickass. It drives the whole score. So I took it, really got excited about it. That’s what got me started again. Since then, I’mreally getting back into it.”

Chasman is scoring a full-length movie written and shot in nearby Port Townsend based on a play by Wes Cecil. He’s done other musical director duties for the stage, and will play with Portland’s Terry Robb for the upcoming Juan de Fuca Festival in late May.

“I’m loving it more than ever,” he says. “It’s been nice to be separated from the whole guitar scene, which drove me crazy after awhile. The projects up here have been musical projects, and the guitar is my vehicle.”

And that “vehicle” actually numbers in the many and comes in various custom-built shapes, sizes and sounds. Chasman has forged relationships with several  luthiers who’ve crafted instruments for him. It’s a personal and involved process. He plays instruments by Jeffrey Elliott (classical guitar), Rob Ehlers (steel string) and an unusual eight-stringed instrument that includes the normal six strings, plus a low A and a high A. “I got greedy for notes!” he says.

He also plays an Ibanez hollow-body electric, a recently acquired Martin D-35, and has on loan a 1959 Martin D-28. “It’s an awesome guitar,” he says. “I don’t think I’ll ever give it back.”

Of the custom-built instruments, he talks easily about the relationships he’s developed with his instrument builders. Usually friends first, the process starts with conversation, about wood tones, sound colors, design, materials, neck widths, action heights, and the like. He’ll select woods from planks of the stuff, the process begins.

“It’s really important to have that kind of relationship,” he says. “Working together. It’s very personal.”

And maybe with the current administration, Chasman will stick around the concert stage and recording studio, and work on new relationships with all of us.