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[Featured
Artist]
Craig
Chaquico
"My
guitar is my voice," Craig Chaquico says.
"There's a time when you don't want songs with
words where the singer tells you exactly what to
think. You want instrumental music that sparks your
imagination and feelings."
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And that's just what
Chaquico did on his first two best-selling and
award-winning Higher Octave albums, Acoustic Highway and
the Grammy-nominated Acoustic Planet. The former
lead guitarist of the legendary Jefferson Starship has
reinvented himself as a leader of the fast-growing pop
instrumental music field.
Music he originally created
as a personal gift for his wife and baby became two
back-to-back #1 albums that dominated Billboard's New Age
chart and radio airplay.
Now Chaquico offers his most
intimate and personal statement in A Thousand Pictures.
This time he journeys inward to his most deep and
intimate feelings in new compositions driven by his
inviting melodies. The album title comes from his belief
that, "if a picture is worth a thousand words, then a
melody is worth a thousand pictures."
Not that Chaquico has
radically changed his style. His ever-present melodic
sense is at the core of every new song. Chaquico relates
that, "Grace Slick says my songs don't need words,
now I get to tell the story in the language of
music."
A Thousand Pictures is
rooted in rock, with Chaquico's acoustic guitar artistry
floating on a very electric rhythm section. His instrument
of choice is a Signature Series guitar Chaquico helped
design for Washburn International, and which makes its
recording debut on A Thousand Pictures.
"For this album I wrote
a poem for each song to give the listeners an idea to lead
them into their own imaginary world," Chaquico says.
"One of my strongest memories is of my third grade
teacher who had us close our eyes, then played Prokofiev's
'Peter and the Wolf,' and said only that it was about a
wolf hunt. 'Now take it from there, and use your
imagination,' she told us. And you've got thirty kids,
each with his own story inspired by the same piece of
music."
"I see my music like
that. People use their imaginations to create their own
story. There are elements of adventure, romance" the
environment and endangered animals in all of my albums. I
can give them a vision, but then they can draw upon their
own experience."
A Thousand Pictures continues
along the path blazed by its two predecessors, As Chaquico,
explains, "The first two albums were more like
travelogues, and this one is more about feelings and
relationships, which are the real heart of life."
The music for 1993's Acoustic
Highway came out of playing acoustic guitar at home
for his then-pregnant wife Kimberly, and then for their
infant son Kyle.
It was a major change of
life for Chaquico. From 1974 to 1990, while other
musicians came and went, he was the only musician on every
Starship album and tour, writing many of the songs and
helping the group collect more than a dozen gold and
platinum albums as well as Grammy and Academy Award
nominations.
"At the end, after so
many changes in the lineup, the band had lost that synergy
and direction, so I left, thinking maybe I'd start another
rock band. But then I rediscovered acoustic guitar, and it
took me on a new trip, down the Acoustic Highway. That
album was an expression of the natural environment around
me in Northern California: Mt. Tamalpais, the redwoods,
jogging on the ocean beach, riding my motorcycle. It's
calm and lush."
"It was also my
discovery that this music I was making just for myself
expressed feelings that other people wanted to hear. So
the next step was Acoustic Planet, the result of
going on tour, so it's more global in themes."
"A Thousand Pictures
is a turn toward my inner feelings, but it explores
more of the jazz side of contemporary instrumental music.
A quality that developed as I worked with jazz musicians
on the road this past year, especially saxophonist Richard
Elliot, who plays on two of the album's tunes."
The brightly upbeat opening
track, 'Sweet Talk,' features Elliot's distinctive
saxophone, and leads into 'Why The Dolphin Smiles.'
'Navajo Stars' combines
romance and environmental issues--Chaquico imagines a
couple riding out to the desert at night and appreciating
the natural beauty, as well as contemplating the wisdom of
Native Americans for living, like the dolphins, in harmony
with the planet.
'We Rode The Wind' was
inspired by an invitation from former bandmate Grace Slick
to visit her in her new home in Los Angeles, and equates
the touring rock band experience with a band of Old West
cowboys who finally ride off in different directions,
"but you always stay so close that if you ever need a
place to stay, or a meal or a fresh horse, you can count
on each other."
A Thousand Pictures is
the most refined statement from an artist who has renewed
his musical vision through acoustic music, one that has
become a way for him to bring other concerns to life.
"I love being on a
label that cares about higher consciousness and about the
environment. Higher Octave uses recycled paper in its CD
packaging, and they try to live lightly on this
planet."
Chaquico associates with
organizations and companies working to make a difference.
While on his concert tours, one of his greatest pleasures
is doing free performances at hospitals in cities set up
by the National Association for Music Therapy (NAMT).
Through Chaquico's efforts, Remo donates hand instruments
and Washburn International donates a guitar to each
hospital. Also thanks to Craig's concern, for every
Chaquico Signature Series guitar it makes, Washburn
International has arranged to have a tree planted.
Chaquico's involvement with
NAMT is his way of repaying a life-changing childhood
experience, when he was hospitalized at the age of 12 with
two broken arms and a broken leg after being hit by a
drunk driver. An understanding doctor and supportive
parents encouraged his desire to play his guitar as
therapy.
Playing guitar become more
than therapy By the time he was in his early teens,
Chaquico's Sacramento rock band Steel Wind was opening
concerts for the just-launched Jefferson Starship, in
which he also played guitar. Soon Chaquico was the
Starship's permanent guitarist, adding not only firepower
but melodic support that gave a distinctive instrumental
sound to the band.
A child of the sixties who
went on to fame and fortune in one of the most popular
rock bands of the seventies and eighties, Chaquico is now
on a new musical road, but it is one that embodies
concerns he has long held.
"A lot of the trappings
of the sixties may have faded," Chaquico says,
"but the core of its philosophy exists today, in
music and in people who try to improve the quality of life
and go to a higher level. And that's what I strive for
with my music."
A Thousand Pictures reaches
that higher level with Chaquico's most imaginative
melodies delivered with one of the most distinctive guitar
styles in contemporary music.
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