Chris Biester, sweating bullets on the Porch Stage at the 2013 Nelsonville Music Festival, with a guitar hanging around his neck, a towel in one hand and a bottle of generic cold syrup in the other, holds the bottle up for the audience to see, yelling “Tussin, the medicine of the uninsured.”
The crowd of more than 50 long-time fans ditched one of the main acts of the festival, Calexico, to see Biester in his outlandish stage presence front the County Pharaohs playing songs from his popular rock outfit Appalachian Death Ride. The size and energy of the crowd is a true testament to the kind of respect and admiration he receives from the town.
“I’m just always amazed by his performances,” said Todd Jacops, graphic designer for Aquabear Legion and Passion Works, where Biester works. “There are a lot of characters in Athens but he’s up there. … (Athens) wouldn’t be the same if he wasn’t here.”
Biester’s effect on culture in the Athens community reaches wide, from his work with Passion Works artists both with and without developmental disabilities, to his own art both musical and visual.
Most of his art these days is found in the form of CD covers, fliers pasted on light posts and street corners promoting shows happening around town or even scribbled on the back of napkins for bartenders. One of his napkin canvases was even framed and hung on the walls of the Smiling Skull Saloon for a time, said Jonathan Holmberg, chairman of the Athens Clean And Safe Halloween Committee and a long-time Athens resident.
“Art has always been something he’s looked at as his real love. Music was something he did for the notoriety and fun of it.” Holmberg said. “He has a certain style of art that’s recognizable. That’s something that a lot of people in the art world strive to do and don’t have much success.”
Yet it’s the music that draws people to Biester’s reserved and wise-cracking side.
“I came here in ’89 and ADR might have been the first band I ever saw … and they were ferocious and awesome and incredible and we were all in awe as freshman,” said Chris Pyle, owner of Donkey Coffee and Espresso. “He’s always been really melodic but also hard-edged as well, which I really love.”
His former band Appalachian Death Ride signed to a label at the top of its game but didn’t make much headway outside of the Midwest region.
Now, Biester can be found at Casa Nueva every Wednesday operating the venue’s weekly open-stage, playing acoustic songs far different than the fast-paced melodic punk of ADR.
“He can completely rock out and then do acoustic stuff that blows your mind,” Pyle said. “I think he’s one of the best song writers I’ve ever heard in Athens.”
But the change in style came out of necessity after “(messing) up his arm” at a construction site. The injury forced him to relearn guitar, a process Holmberg said served as therapy to strengthen his arm.
Biester’s songs draw from personal experience, as he lives much of his life simply and away from many luxuries. When June Bug, operator of Jackie O’s Pub & Brewery’s open stage and a musician in his own right, first arrived in Athens in the ’90s, the two roomed together in a gutted-out house with a wood burning stove, barely any electricity and no running water.
“None of us were in the best of places in our personal lives, but I remember it fondly at this point,” June Bug said. “It was not easy living and it wasn’t necessarily because of each other it was just pretty bare. A good experience to have behind you I suppose as far as lifestyles go.”
He said it was a “wild time” where they got flooded out and snowed in frequently, but also a time of friendship in which they’d drag people out to the country for jam sessions and to “lose their minds.”
It was those times that June Bug said likely formed Biester’s inspiration for line drawings depicting a depression era feel and one of his recurring characters, a wanderer sporting a funny hat and a guitar case that June Bug said could be a self portrait of sorts, without intending to be.
“If I were to hold up an example of what I think makes Athens cool, he’d certainly be one of ‘em,” June Bug said. “I love him dearly, he’s a good man and I’m glad we have him in this town.”
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