Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Chris Kelly. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Chris thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Do you wish you had waited to pursue your creative career or do you wish you had started sooner?

I wish that I had started sooner, or rather, I wish I had taken more time to consider all of my options and what I possibly could’ve done to help propel my creative career earlier. I started playing drums in high school (rather late, I was 15 and most of my peers that played an instrument all seemed to have started around 11 or 12) and ended up playing in a couple of different bands while still in high school. Nothing serious, just kids having fun. I later join a band in college that I would continue to play music with for the next 12 years of my life, up until Covid shut the world down.

I’ve played in bands pretty much nonstop since I was 16 or 17 years old and I’m now 38, so you would think that would mean that I got an early start. However, for many years, I felt like if I just practiced a lot and played a good show, bigger and better things would come my way, period. That may work for some, but my drumming isn’t anything groundbreaking and shows are fleeting moments. So here is where I wish I had used my time and skill more productively:

I’ve always like to draw, ever since I was little, but I never really took it seriously and when I got into my teen years, I had all but stopped drawing aside from the occasional doodle in my school notebooks. I wish I had taken drawing more seriously and actually pursued some art classes to hone my skills. I think back, and I could’ve put my drawing skills into making cool flyers for my band’s shows, or maybe started coming up with some merch ideas. If we had made an EP or something, maybe I could’ve come up with the album art for it. Something palpable to give to our friends and fans that has a lasting impression. Who knows, where this could have lead… a cool graphic design career? Maybe more recognition for the band’s that I played in? At the very least, I’d probably be a much better artist than I am today.

There’s so much more that goes into being in a band or a musician than just being really good at your instrument. Of course you need to be good at your instrument.. there’s no shortcut for that. However, there are so many other avenues you can explore to enhance your music and how you present it to the world. I really wish I had thought about all of that earlier on in my drumming career and taken more advantage or the spare time I had on hand.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

This is a tricky question for me to answer because I have a full-time job that I really enjoy and make a living from. Drumming and art are just a hobbies for me, albeit they are hobbies that takes up a significant amount of my free time, more so than most people’s hobbies I’d imagine (at least in my inner circle of friends). However, I do make a decent amount of money on the side gigging with multiple bands and occasionally some money for my art.

I sort of just fell into gigging without too much thought about it, bands always need drummers! Everybody plays guitar but drummers are a hot commodity. I was lucky enough to have very talented friends that took music very seriously as well. I joined a band with a few good friends of mine in college, we were initially called Jesús and the Rabbis and later changed our name to The Go Ahead, and I played with them for about 12 years. We gained a decent little following in San Francisco. Throughout the years, my name would get recommended to other musicians or singer songwriters that were looking for a drummer and I realized that I could make a little bit of supplemental income by taking these gigs and it also gave me a chance to meet and network with a bunch of new people/musicians/artist that I otherwise would not have come in contact with. These days, I play in three different bands: Greg Hoy and the Boys, LEVEL DROP, and The Undercurrent. Each band is a completely different genre of music so it keeps things exciting and fresh! I’m not making any sort of stable income by playing in these bands but it’s just so much fun and feeds my creative side.

I’ve gotten to do a lot of cool things along the way: I wrote and recorded a full-length album and two EPs with The Go Ahead. I’ve gotten to play some iconic San Francisco venues such as the Great American Music Hall, The Chapel, and the Independent. I was asked to design some merch for The Undercurrent. I’ve also sold some of my own artwork in the passed few years. I got really into drawing on drum heads for awhile which a lot of my friends loved and eventually purchased from me.

At the end of the day, I don’t really have a direction I’m going with my music or art, I just like being able to create everyday and I have the outlet(s) to do that. Hopefully I’ll be able to record with one of the bands that I play with and I’ll be able to play more of a role in the artistic side of it and not just the drumming.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I think this will be a good way to explain how my creative endeavors helped me land my full-time job and hopefully my ongoing career path. So like I mentioned before, I’ve always been creative and as I started playing in numerous bands, some more serious than others, I was always brainstorming ways of how I could do more for the band or myself as a musician. Like I stated earlier, I’ve always liked to draw, but never took it that seriously. As I got older, I started thinking about the possibilities of doing design work for my band or others (album cover design, making flyers for gigs, merch, etc.).

I could put pen to paper but that was it; I had no idea how to digitize anything or see an idea through to the end. I was also extremely busy for most of my 20’s, I was playing in bands, I was teaching drum lessons and had as many as 15 students at one time, and I was a barista as well to help supplement my income and allow me to afford rent in San Francisco. This meant late nights and early mornings. I was burning the candle at both ends for the better part of 10 years and for the most part wasn’t making much progress other than being able to pay my bills.

I really wanted to take some design classes or maybe try to learn photoshop or something, I just couldn’t figure out when I would have the time or energy to do so. I’d be up at 5am to go to work at the coffee shop, I’d get off at noon and rush home to eat and then head off to teach maybe 4-5 drum lessons, then I would have a gig with my band that night and I wouldn’t get home until after midnight.. only to do it all over again the next day. Rinse and repeat.

Then March of 2020 hit and we all know what happened then. I lost my coffee shop job, and gigging stopped all together. I was fortunately enough to still keep most of my drum students and shift to online instruction so that helped financially. Otherwise, I had so much free time on my hands. City College of San Francisco offers free tuition to all San Francisco residence and I saw my opportunity. I signed up for their digital media design program and in the fall of 2020 I began classes and was introduced to all of the Adobe apps (photoshop, illustrator, animate, and indesign) and I was able to take some basic design and drawing courses to brush up on my skills.

I had only completed a year of courses when I began looking for some potential part-time jobs in the field. I was looking on craigslist and found an ad for a San Francisco based photographer who was looking for a full-time assistant. The ad seemed to good to be true but I answered it anyway and sent my resumé and I got a callback from him. This photographer turned out to be Jay Blakesberg, a well-known music photographer, synonymous with the Grateful Dead and has photographed pretty much any musician you can think of from the 70s, 80s, 90s, and early 00s. I interviewed with him and he ended up giving me the job. I now work full-time has his digital retoucher for all of his photos as well as digitizing his film archive, making prints to send to clients, and file managing his MASSIVE digital archive. I’ve been with him for 4.5 years now and couldn’t be happier. I now feel like I’m able to peak behind the curtain of rock ‘n’ roll history firsthand. It’s been amazing to go from a working, gigging musician, to working full-time for a legendary music photographer and getting to see and work on photos of bands and musicians I grew up listening to and idolizing.

I’ve found that even though I’m working full-time now, I’m even more inspired to play music and create outside of my job, in my free time and I have the energy to do it all now since I finally have a consistent work schedule for once in my life!

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

I say this knowing that I also need to take my own advice: we all need to go see more live music and more live local music. We need to support musicians and artists directly, whether its attending shows, promoting our favorite artists, or buying merch from them. Streaming is awesome and convenient, but it really doesn’t do much for the artist and I feel like it makes us lazier as consumers.

Physical media is so cool! Buying an album from the artist supports them and you have a palpable thing to enjoy from your favorite artist. Liner notes and album art are so so so cool and I’ve missed it dearly ever since streaming took over. It’s a whole other creative aspect to a bands’ album that has been lost. If there’s a demand for more physical media, there’s a demand for more creatives, or maybe the musicians are able to delve into their other creative sides outside of their instruments.

Support for the local music seen also builds community. You can interact with your favorite musicians/artist or befriend people you regularly see at shows and network with them. Streaming is easy but isolating. Artists only earn fractions of pennies while their hardwork is consumed for free by the masses. I’m trying to be better and limit my streaming usage, especially with Spotify. I hate them more and more everyday but it’s so engrained into my routine. I’m looking for other avenues to consume my music. I have a pair of turntables so purchasing vinyl has been an awesome way to immerse myself in music and hopefully be contributing to a bands’ success!

Contact Info:

• Instagram: chris_kellyyyy and c.kelly.art
• Linkedin: Chris Kelly
• Youtube: CKellyDRuMs – @ckellydrums928

Image Credits

All images with ©Jay Blakesberg are (obviously) by Jay Blakesberg. All other images are by me, Chris Kelly