The stories of Nashville in the 1960s run rampant with tall tales, myths, true crime and a whole lot of universal truth.   Legendary artists like Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings & Tom T Hall were finding their fame.  Others like Mickey Newbury, Jerry Jeff Walker and Willie Nelson were restlessly making their way.  Just ask Chris Gantry.  He was one of many struggling songwriters with a heartful of dreams & songs to publish in those days.  His best-known song, “Dreams of an Everyday Housewife,” was recorded by Glen Campbell in 1968.

But for Chris, a wild, innovative, and energetic artist, the music scene was ‘dead silence’ until Kris came to Nashville. The song, “Here Comes the Captain,” from his well-received 2014 album, Live at the Filming Station, tells how Kris came to Nashville and changed everything for songwriters in the town. He was putting out songs that were outside of the norm for country music.  Kris was an Air Force Captain, a member of the Tennessee National Guard, and a Rhodes Scholar who loved songwriting so much he was willing to work as a janitor in recording studios to be near where the songs were made. A posse gathered around him who were not conservative in their outlook or lifestyle. They became the counterculture of established Nashville.  It wouldn’t be long before they were dubbed, “outlaws.’ And a movement was born. But, like Kris, they loved real country music.

Chris Gantry was cut from the same cloth as Kris Kristofferson. He was a native of New York. At 21, he came to Nashville with years of songwriting experience in New York City.  It was 1963.  He leaned heavily on Nashville’s Songwriter’s Row and made some important friends during those years. He hung in bars like Skulls Rainbow Room & Printer’s Alley Burlesque. There he met Shel Silverstein & Kris Kristofferson who would play key roles in his career.

Kris would become a peer and a friend to Gantry. Enough so that when he was recording his sophomore album, 1971s Silver Tongue Devil & I, as he recorded his now classic, “The Pilgrim: Chapter 33,” Chris Gantry’s name begins the song dedication famously with “I started out writing this song about Chris Gantry….” making Gantry’s name forever recognizable to authentic country music fans for generations to come as Kris placed him in front of such notables as Funky Donnie Fritts, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Johnny Cash and Dennis Hopper.

A classic Kristofferson song became the (possibly unintentional) basis for a Gantry song, “Old Songwriter,” on Live at the Filming Station.  Kristofferson song, “To Beat the Devil,” is about Kris’s early days hungry and alone, he is a wandering songwriter who comes in out of the cold and is given unsolicited advice from the devil himself. The advice captured in the chorus is paraphrased you can go on writing songs, but you’re wasting your time cause nobody’s listening. So, the song concludes with the songwriter hearing the devil’s unwanted advice, drinking a free beer, and stealing his song, all the while not believing no one wants to hear what he’s singing.

So, in real-time, fast-forward several decades, Kris goes on, and, well, he becomes Kris Kristofferson, the songwriter turned actor-movie star who returns to bee an old songwriter and country music legend in his Autumn years. Chris Gantry meanwhile weaves in and out of songwriting and at Shel Silverstein’s inspiration writes plays and children’s stories; and then in a remarkable turnaround several years later, he returns to recording new songs again. In 2014, he recorded the aforementioned, Live at the Filming Station, as perfect a live recording as you are likely to hear from any songwriter from any genre or generation.  The songs embrace the past, present & future with themes of wisdom, tales of redemption, and playing that can is so urgent you can feel the blood on his fingers.  Songs like “Hey Algernon,” “Searching” and “Poison,” engage the listener and encourage us to hear inside the soul of his stories.  There is a life-giving truth there, we need only listen and hear. It’s all about being true to yourself and your world. Most specifically, in the song, “Old Songwriter,” Gantry sings a tale of meeting a veteran of the craft.  Intentional or not, the story and truth in the song are rooted in Kris’s “To Beat the Devil.”  The scene has changed.  It’s no longer a cold winter.  It must be spring because it is set on a park bench with a young songwriter who invites himself to stand next to an old songwriter. He complains that no one listens.  This old songwriter is not the devil.  This uninvited friend is an angel as he sings the core of what it means to be a songwriter and an artist in answer to the young songwriter’s complaints in much the same way the devil did in Kris’s song.

As the years roll by, the young songwriter remembers the old angel songwriter’s words in the park and concludes the song with that chorus that says, “This life’s about being true to yourself and if you ain’t then you’re living a lie.”  It is for songwriters and artists of all ages.  Gantry has gifted us with a song that returns to the story Kris once told and brings with him decades of hard-to-come-by truth.

“Songs don’t wait for the writer to get written if you’re here or not. I ain’t got no less or more than you friend but I’m free and in this world, that’s sayin’ a lot. So go home and don’t cry on my shoulder. Just keep writing them songs till you die. Cause this life’s about being true to yourself and if you ain’t then you’re living a lie.” 

Kristofferson and Gantry have lived their lives and careers through the prism of the songs, “To Beat the Devil,” and “Old Songwriter” always true to who they are as artists and as men.  Their genesis as writers was decades ago, but the truth of the songs continues to resonate in a way that is universal and transcends age…Kris is still the Captain.  Gantry remembers. His songs will always be a North Star to help guide many young songwriters through their journey. Chris Gantry remembers well. He’s like a comet that keeps roaring through space and time shining bright. His craft of song and story are as sharp as ever.

On Live at the Filming Station, Gantry wrote a song that also becomes an answer to one of Kris’s classic songs, “The Pilgrim: Chapter 33.” This Kristofferson song speaks to the uncertain nature of the young songwriter.  “He’s a walking contradiction, partly truth, and partly fiction.”   And in the end, he takes ‘every wrong direction on his lonely way back home.’  These days, both writers find there is something to be said for the certainty of kindness, mercy, grace, and truth.  It’s found in Kris Kristofferson’s 2013 album of original songs, Feelin’ Mortal, with the title song he confesses as he entered his 76th year:

I thank my lucky stars
From here to eternity
For the artist that you are
And the man you made of me

It is not be well enough known, that while Kris, Waylon and Willie popularized the Outlaw Country Movement, the reality of the Outlaw as a counter-culture figure had long been defined by folks like Chris Gantry, Mickey Newbury & Chip Taylor.  Others were there pushing the envelope on the often-limiting country music world in Nashville of the 1960s.  In 2014, Gantry recorded, perhaps another unintentional answer to Kris, his friend and songwriting peer.  To conclude this edition of this blog, I’ll leave you with the lyrics to the song written a decade ago where Chris Gentry re-defines just what an Outlaw is.

Outlaw
By Chris Gentry
I see that kid collecting money for the homeless vet
That man who treats his animals like family not his pets
That woman whose a helper to everyone she gives
In case you didn’t know it.
That’s what outlaw is

That painter drawing pictures that beautify the earth
Those songs of peace the writer writes and sings for all he’s worth
Those teacher who devotes their lives to working for the kids
In case you didn’t know it
That’s what outlaw is

Outlaw ain’t about a fast draw
ain’t about a gunfight
It’s about livin’ right.
Treating somebody else like you wanna be treated yourself
Works like a ripple effect
freedom is something that we gotta protect
All of that bad boy, bad girl stuff we spout, put it in a trash bag, and throw it on out
We will meet one day on the Rainbow Bridge.
That’s what Outlaw is

I had to be a taker to learn how to give back
I had to drive right off a cliff to know to keep on track
And if my misfortunes show you there’s a better way to live
In case you didn’t know it
That’s what Outlaw is.