Welcome to the final installment of January’s Three Stars. So far we’ve covered Hello Tokyo, Mike Holden, and today we’re rounding out with Ris Paul Ric.
Chris Richards
Image from popmatters.com
It doesn’t come easy to most musicians. For some, all they could ask for is a few great songs on a couple albums and a loyal fanbase. A world tour would be nice, no doubt. For DC musician and former Q and not U front man Chris Richards, such spoils came early in his music career. Too early, in fact, to walk away from the game. So what is a rocker, who has accomplished more than you could ask for when starting up a band, to do when your band calls it quits? Start over. Apply what you’ve learned, take your music in a new direction. Christoper Paul Richards, aka Ris Paul Ric, earned carte blanche in his previous gig to sing his mind and took advantage of his downtime before his next project to produce a solo album deviating far from Q and not U’s dance punk sound, relying more on intimacy than arrangement.
At a Black Cat show last month, opening for DC electronica rockers Supersystem, Ris Paul Ric took the stage, fresh off a national club tour, and played again before the same wonderful people he used to rock so often. Standing atop his guitar amp, bearing his trademark face writing and black armband, reflecting purple light shone from below and bearing only a clear bodied electric guitar, Ris played as intimate a set you can get with hundreds watching, covering most of the tracks from his solo CD Purple Blaze and pulling everyone in to his wonderfully folky psychedelic world. Lacking a danceable rhythm section, Ris’ set was more about drifting away with his haunting falsetto vocals and delayed guitar. In the eerie “Valerie Teardrop,” Ris makes you wonder if his moniker indicates a request for privacy in the face of mass popularity, singing “you don’t know my name,” while standing alone above the crowd. He was quite vocal in between sets, giving shouts out to all DC musicians, calling for a big 2006 in the local music scene, and making a very public request for any “Beyonces” to front his next project. Saving the title track for last, Ris used pre-recorded guitar parts on “Purple Blaze” to free his hands as he read the rapid stream of thought-observational lyrics from index cards, flicking each into the crowd after a couple lines, before picking up his strings to play out the rest of the song.
Ris Paul Ric paints a picture that he’s so comfortable and passionate about creating music, he has to keep changing things like, oh, genres, in order to keep himself interested, and literally creates obstacles between himself and his audience when playing live in order to keep himself working hard to connect with his fans. Ris Paul Ric liberates Chris Richards; it breaks him free from the boundaries of band collaboration and musical limitation. Although he’s planning a new band to explore even more musical territory, Chris assured us there’s more Ris Paul Ric to come.
