Okay, Chris, we're recording on this end. Are you recording on your end?

Okay, we're recording Ding

dong. Okay, Chris, just to let you know I'll end up going back through the entire interview to do some edits. Okay, So if some noise happens in the background of your cell phone rings or you cough, but never saying a lot of thumbs or something like that, I'll go back and edit a lot of those out. Okay?

Okay. I plan to only answer. And, um so that will be

tricky. This is paternal show featuring conversations with great men about parenting and modern manhood. That's what they're teaching you in school. All right, listen to me. Listen to your father and about the challenges of being a father and a son. Did you order some kegs of beer? No pullers a fella on a beer truck out on the street that says you did. I'm Nick Vershaw. I think my son was about two years old when he fully became aware that music existed. By that, I mean, he was able to listen to a song, then listen to it again. And somewhere in his little brain, he decided he liked that song, and eventually he would memorize it.

Most of the songs that he gravitated to when he was two years old were by an artist named Casper. Baby Pants. Kids Music. We later saw Casper Live in Seattle. That was also my son's first concert. He was three, and he had adored and memorized this one song, and he broke into tears when he didn't hear that song at the concert and after the show, my wife and I introduced our son to Casper because Children's concerts offer a lot more intimate access to the performer than other shows. And not on Lee. Did Casper apologize to my son for not playing the song during his show, but he abruptly played a verse or two right there on the spot. Casper Baby Pants is the stage name of Chris Balloon has been making music and even writing songs himself since he was a kid. Who's that traveling Spider? John Women gone. He grew up in the Seattle area,

and while we'll get to what he did with his musical career and the long evolution that brought him to that stage when his music made my kids smile, we'll start with some of Chris's first memories of music in 1967. The Beatles release Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band in May of that year, and Chris's Life was never the same. Well, my

older brother Paul bought Sergeant Pepper's for my parents Christmas 1967. They didn't really get it, of course, and they kind of stuck it away with all their Don Ho and being Crosby and Andy Williams Records. And I pulled it out as a 2.5 year old. I was told that I did That is a 2.5 year old, but I know that I listened to it from the time I was 2.5 till I was about nine. So I think for 7 6.5 years I only listened to that record. I didn't know that there were other records in the world, and my parent's record player was terrible. It had a super blunt needle, and so the mix I was used to on that record is very different than the mix, like when the 50th anniversary edition came out. I barely recognize that that recording because the whole experience for me was like listening to an artifact through the veil of time. You know, it was like crackly. And that record set off, uh, movies in my head

that you

and that's kind of ever since became a criteria for how songs can affect a listener is that as a child, I saw the circus tent in being for the benefit of Mr Kite. Of course. Later I had learned that John Lennon told George Martin, I wanna smell the sawdust on the floor When when I listen to this song and I did that, I really got what John Lennon was trying to do. I felt it. I hallucinated it. I like to put lyrics forward, you know, story forward, and offer a picture and a little trip for people. And that directly comes from being an infant Listening to Sergeant Pepper's over and over. It

was 20 years ago today. By all accounts, Chris Blue had a happy childhood. Growing up with his parents and older siblings. His parents met while his dad was serving in the U. S. Navy, and he was stationed on Bainbridge Island outside of Seattle. Chris's dad was a banker for much of his adult life and the two major lessons Chris learned from his dad. With these, if you borrow something from someone, always return it in better condition and never, never be late. His dad was a principled man, and much of that came from his own upbringing in Missouri as the son of a sharecropper.

God, I mean the culture. My dad grew up, and he told the story that really epitomized culture he grew up in, which is that he's a sharecropper's son. They're moving from cabin to cabin, you know, living the itinerant sharecropper life. They'd be in one place for a year and 1/2 to 3, maybe. And then they move. One of the cabins they had was on a wide open plain, and it was winter time and the wind was whipping down this plane and the cabin was on stilts, and the floorboards weren't exactly touching each other on the floor. So the wind was coming up through the floorboards. There was no insulation, and he remembers trying to go to sleep in the freezing cold and watching a sheet of paper float around the room,

and it occurred to him if we took hay bales and put him around the perimeter of the house. We'd insulate the place and the wind would be gone, and we get more efficient heating and all that. And then the next thought he had was, If I suggest that to my dad, I'll get yelled at and the perception if we did something like that, the perception of the community would be, oh, the blues or weak because they put hey, bails up. So that kind of like epitomises where my parents were coming from, which is like, Don't make waves Don't question the status quo appear to be strong, no vulnerability, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, when that's not really how people live, you know, and ah, improve.

You had some conflicts with your dad At times. I think most sons have conflicts with their fathers. At some point in their early lives, usually as teenagers, I always feel like guys who end up being rock stars or rock musicians. They felt like they there was a need to rebel. Did you feel I need to rebel from your father or from your

parents? Yeah, I just wanted to be myself. I've always had this funny, I guess I was brought up Catholic, and then my mom got very intense about the old way of saying Mass in Latin and with the smoking little incense stuff that was really intense for me. And I became an altar boy doing that, and I got really into it. And then I watched Cosmos, the Carl Sagan, Siri's and that thing blew my mind so hard that I just decided, All right, I don't really believe all this. You know, stories have been told about how things work in this omnipresent, bearded man that watches over everything. I don't think that's true.

So what is true? And then I started on this long quest to find out, like, What is the truth of existence? Because I had been fed a story that in belief, I guess, you know, my parents showed me away and then I was like, Well, I don't really want to go that way. So at least they showed me away and I decided not to do it. And then by default, I found mine. It's better than them not showing me any way at all. I think the clash between me and my Dad was more me putting the truth first rather than putting any sort of dogma or following instructions first. So I wasn't out to like Rebel. I was just really interested in the truth of existence. Like, what is the truth of why this whole show is happening that drove me more than following the rules?

Chris began playing the piano when he was four years old, and his parents had aspirations of him becoming a concert pianist. But those largely ended when he was introduced to his first guitar, a 19 sixties era Goya nylon string acoustic he still used today. By the time he was in his twenties, he bounced around as a musician in Boston and Los Angeles, and by late 1993 Chris was back in Seattle and he'd started a band called The Presidents of the United States of America. Three Group built a reputation in Seattle for their quirky, funny and catchy songs that stood out against the backdrop of the Seattle music scene at the time when bands like Mud, Honey, Pearl Jam and Nirvana had set the template Everybody, Iwas, just the president's self titled debut, came out in March 1995. And then everything changed, making their network television debut. Ladies,

gentlemen, please welcome the presidents of the United States of America. Record went on to sell more than three million copies in the United States, and the hit single Lump became the number one song on billboards. Bottom Rock chart in the U. S. And Canada. The president's even played a concert at the base of Mount Rushmore that was broadcast on MTV. But for Chris, success and fame was not necessarily what he was looking for. Not this way. Way

Well, on a gut level, I wanted out immediately. I actually wanted to kind of pull a Sex Pistols and just, you know, break up. I might have. I think I even pitched that to the guys in the band and the label like Let's just stop because I don't know. I have this immediate sensation that metaphorically I had gotten into that magical room that everyone wants to get into that like backstage room, where you think it's going to be the end of all your troubles and just a pillow of ease and floating along with people feeding you grapes, and you get into that room, and I discovered that it wasn't that it was hard work and it was disorienting and a lot of new systems and people to get used to. And to top it all off you. I immediately saw that there was another door inside that room that led, and I knew instinctively. It led to another room, and inside that room was a door that went to another room.

And inside that room was a door that went to another room and that the doors and the rooms would never end. And the idea of arriving and being like, Ah, here I am would never happen because there's too many other people and other forces at work that can derail your dream. So once things get successful in the traditional sense and, like the tendrils of influence, start coming in that aren't your own, you're putting yourself in a really vulnerable position. If you're in search of ultimate truth and happiness. If you're not, then you can just maybe scoot through those rooms. Or maybe you can be, and you can scoot through those rooms to and you're that kind of person I don't know. So I allowed the world to kind of push me along on. And I did the thing I did the, you know,

made the videos, went on MTV did the tours, did all that stuff. But deep down, I was like, This is not it. I need to get out. I need It's like I need to quit this job I have in order to find the job I really want. And Ah, that struggle took a long time.

Now you became a dad to your son, Auggie, in April 1997. Yeah, and that's kind of right in the middle of this fame, right? Oh, yeah. How did your home life contrast with what you had going on with your music career? Yeah,

we'd put out we put out a second record, which, of course, you know didn't do as well as the first. Which is what? You know, we were just following a little rock n roll brochure. We exhaustively put out the mediocre second record, which I actually love. Now I think it's a great record, but, um yeah, and that had come out. And we were touring on that when Augie was born and there was a disconnect between the two, like one of the ways that manifested itself was I'd come home from tour where I was, you know, King of the mountain and I'd have to,

like, do the dishes and, ah, mow the lawn And I remember being like, I'm not gonna do the dishes of mother Line. I'm a rock God, that's my unfiltered ego talking. Of course, I didn't really believe that, but I could. It was just another way with the dissidents of that traditionally successful touring rock band thing rubbed up against riel life in a way that made friction and I didn't like it. So is another aspect. You know, the message getting louder like this, isn't it, you know,

kind of like find something you can do that is part of your life and complements the part of your life. That's riel. Now I always want to say the caveat that I love the music we made and I love the fans we had and I loved playing live. And I love the connection we may with people, and I love the energy we offered. And we were on the right track, you know, we were. And it turns out I mean, I want to stay, jump forward too much. But it turns out it was super close to the solution. It just wasn't the solution. It was just a, as they say in Rocky horror, a jump to the left and a step to the right. I put my hands on my hips, you

know. So anyway, it was close. It was really close. Coming up on paternal, Chris officially makes the transformation to a new career and a new stage persona. Casper, Baby,

it's silliness is a byproduct of peace and happiness and enlightenment. I feel like it's a natural off gassing of that searching for the truth, which led me to a certain kind of perspective of enlightenment that makes it feel right to be

goofy. If this is the first time you've listened to paternal, I want to let you know that you can find all of our previous episodes on our website at paternal podcast dot com, or they're in your feet right now. And if you're enjoying this episode with Chris Balu, you might also like our debut episode from way back in 2017 with Seattle radio deejay John Richards, a friend of Blues who spoke with me about how the music of bands like the Pixies, Smiths and The Replacements saved his life as a teenager and what kind of music he exposed his kids to when they were young. I don't let my kids listen the kids music. The only thing let's do is Casper. That's the only thing. They've listened Teoh, because most of it's not very good. What you do is I just open him up to Beatles and the Stones and a hip hop like tribe

called Quest and a Lost

Soul and really catchy, simple things that they loved. Go to paternal podcast dot com to find that episode and all of the others dating back to 2017. And that's also where you could sign up for our newsletter to hear about all the shows we have coming in the future. You can also email me at Nick at maternal podcast dot com with any comments or suggestions for men, we should profile on this show. Make sure you subscribe to the show on apple podcasts or wherever you're listening. Then keep an eye on your feed for new episodes. I'm Nick Vershaw and this paternal. Back in 1993 Chris Baloo and his band, The Presidents of the United States of America, performed a show on Labor Day weekend in Seattle. And there was so much buzz around the group that not long after the show, they had offers from seven major record labels. One that wanted the band badly was Maverick, a label relatively new on the scene at the time that was founded by Madonna. Chris and the president's traveled down to Los Angeles to meet with the Queen of Pop and discuss a potential deal.

And though they ultimately signed with Columbia Records, Madonna pulled Chris aside after their meeting and gave him some advice. You're funny, she said, and your songs of fun. So you will never receive critical acclaim or validation for the craft and the hard work you have to put in to do what you dio. That turned out to be largely true for Chris while he was with the president's who played the last show of their first iteration in January 1998. But it wasn't so. In his second career as a Children's artist under the stage name Casper, Baby bands, Blue Jays 500 when they see years ago Christmas first Wife were stuck in a car on a long drive with their son, Augie, and the only thing they found that worked to soothe their son was to sing. And that moment planted the seed for what would come later. Will you sit and watch the sun go? Maybe the silliness and creativity Chris had always imbued in his music with presidents songs about dune buggies, stray cats, boll weevils and the bliss of eating peaches might help parents get through the day with their young kids.

That happened when my son was little, say, like 98 99. Something like that. Yeah, and Mary Lynn, his mom, my previous wife, my davon say, as I call her, because we get along so well. We've gone from fiance to married to Davon, say she just started singing, Run, baby, run, run,

run, run, run, run! And Augie's demeanor just totally changed and he became completely happy. And it wasn't until way later. You know, 2009 or eight when I started writing the music for Casper that I really remembered that dynamic that moment and thought, Oh, that's a gift. I need to really focus on making music that does what she did for our son, because that's gonna help people in a real practical way. Have a better day, you know, and lower stress. And by that extension,

lower instances of potential. You know, verbal abuse from parents, the kids, physical abuse. You know, when you don't sleep for a year, you're capable of some pretty bad decisions, even if you're the most empathetic human in the world. So it became Yeah, that moment really became the seed of the purpose of the music. And then my second wife, Cates Artwork was the tipping point as Faras, realizing that I wanted to make this music that was silly and well crafted and simple and bright and full of animals, it was everything that was in her art I wanted to have in this music that I couldn't describe. I really couldn't have found Casper without either of my wives. I needed both wives in order to get the job done. So

you mentioned your wife, Kate Kendell. She's a Children's book illustrator, and anyone who knows your music knows that the artwork and the look of the album's sort of flows seamlessly with the music itself and the vibe that you're putting out. But at the time, do you think it was freeing to bring this idea to life, to bring everything together? Or was it scary to try something new?

No, it was absolutely freeing. Oh, yeah, it was. There was no hesitation when the giant cartoon light bulb went off over my head that made me realize it's kids music. That's what I needed to do since 1994. That's where I needed to be putting my energy. This is the voice that was trying to get out this. The next feeling was absolute relaxation and bliss. And like relief and the world of kids, music has nothing to do with being cool and being the flavor of the month or having a hit on the radio. And all that pressure that we had on our Selves are put on ourselves as the president's was is irrelevant in that world. You know, it's a perennial medium, the music for kids. Every five years my entire audience grows out of me.

I get a brand new audience, so the music is just there, like flowers that keep growing and getting picked by people, and they just keep growing and growing and growing. I just loved that feeling of like, Oh my God, I'm I'm finally totally irrelevant, you know, culturally, completely irrelevant. Well, simultaneously being loved and successful and having a purpose and connecting with an audience. It's absolutely perfect. It's so great. I love it.

I'm curious if you faced any questions. Or even the criticism from your rock appears of the era when you're thinking, you know, nineties era Seattle about leaving mainstream rock for Children's music? Or did the people who knew you well in those people that you sort of came up with in music did they understand that Maybe this is who you were the entire time?

No, I've got nothing but support. In fact, I've had several grunge ease on my Casper albums. Couple of Stone from Pearl Jam's Been on an album, Weird Al Yankovic spin on an album, Steve Turner for Mud Honey, Chris Novoselic from Nirvana. I think it's so obvious or to everybody the transition seems so like. Of course, he's making kids music, you know, like I never got any, uh, flak. You

know, you've said. I think it other times that that your task with Casper is to write songs that are appealing to both a 33 year old and especially a three year old. Yeah, at this point, do you have a gut instinct of what will resonate with a three year old brain?

Yeah, it's my own brain. The initial moment of inspiration often leads to a years long dance with the song where I'm kind of like pushing and pulling it and maybe trying it slow, trying it fast. Sometimes those efforts peter out and lead to a dead end in the song never gets released, sometimes miraculously, some a year and 1/2 or two years down the road of doing that dance, I'll have a revelation. Oh, it's in the wrong key, and it should be from the first person perspective and have a guitar instead of a piano. And then boom, there it is. So yeah, and that's really conscious choice because little kids can't handle too much stuff. I think some other kids music maybe dishes out too many notes, too many solos,

too much jamming, and I like to look at the music I'm making for Casper as analogous to making like a little dovetail joint Jewell box. You know, like I'm trying to make something where every nook fits every cranny and every little space is filled or spacious on purpose, and it's like this beautiful little you know, handmade box. There's a satisfaction and experiencing all those well placed little sounds and, ah, that purpose in the music. So anyway, that's my theory. But so far it's

working. Chris released the 17th album of his career as Casper Baby Pants earlier this year, and he picked up his first Grammy nomination for best Children's album in 2019. And the success he's had in this second half of his musical career can perhaps be best summed up in a quote he's given in the past. When asked about advice for parents. Show your kids who you really are. First you have to learn who you really are, But if you know yourself, your offspring will follow suit. Baby and I get up in darkness. So much of Chris's life has revolved around that idea of finding out who he really is, and only then could he be happy as an artist and as a father.

Yeah. I mean, it is a huge undertaking because at least in my case, I was not given any clues by my parents. I mean, I was shown how to behave and given principles of how to live, but I wasn't really given a roadmap to my own self by them. I had to figure that out through hunting and pecking. So it took a long time and a lot of energy to get there. And there's a lot of distractions along the way that seemed like easy answers. Being on the quest to figure out who I really am has helped me just tell my kids that they need to be on their own quest to figure out who they are. And then I offer observations to them about who I think they are and where their strengths are. But Mason mostly, I told them, be present in any given moment and be connected to how you feel in your gut or in your intuition, or in your emotional brain or whatever you want to call it, like on an emotional level,

not a cognitive level, but on an emotional level. How do you feel in that moment. Then they start to feel like, Oh, my point of view influences outcomes. So later, my point of view about, say, I'm, you know, the bass player in a band that I hate, that's about to get signed. What should I do? I should quit and find my own way because my opinion matters. And that little tiny,

razor thin, microscopic doorway of right now is how you get to your happiest life. So that's what I tell my kids. It's really not me telling them how to behave. It's telling them how to use a sort of formula of intuition in the moment to find out their own truth.

You said in the past that eventually the Casper arc of your career will come to an end, just as the president's arc did years ago. It's almost as if it's another door you've gone through in your life. And there are other doors. Yeah, if there is another door that you will go through later in life, what do you hope is the legacy of Casper? Or do you even think about the legacy of Casper?

Oh, very much, yeah, not in the sense that it drives my creative choices at all. I think about the family in the car, literally. I put myself in that car when I'm making music, and that's again a way of being in the moment and understanding how I feel in the moment about the music I'm making cause how it's perceived. Outside of, you know, once I release, it is really not up to me. But I can put myself in that car, and I can put myself in a living room on a rainy Sunday when everyone's bored and needs to have a dance party. So beyond that, I can't control it. But again,

the thing I love about the kids music is its perennial, and that's not going to stop every five years. Six years, seven years. I'm gonna get a whole new crop, and I'm hoping that base just grows and grows and grows and more people get to use the music. I'm not hoping that so that I become like, you know, a good Brazilian air, but I'm hoping that it finds Mawr ears because I think it's the feedback I'm getting from parents. The you know, teary eyed parents that approach the merch table at a show and tell me how the music saved their cross country trip or their daily commute. I want more people to have that. So I'm hoping the legacy is that the music continues to flow without me pushing it at all, and

that more people get to use it and have it and enjoy it. That's musician and father Chris Balloon. If you want to learn more about Casper, baby bands will put a link to his site in our episode notes, and you can check out his music on Spotify or wherever you get. Your music journal is produced by me, Nick for Shaw, you can email me at Nick at paternal podcast dot com or on Twitter at nick dot for our theme music is performed by Jeff Lardner and Mark Away. But

you know, I wasn't old enough or mature enough to really act on it. I just There's my laundry.

I'm Nick version,