Peter “The Chanman” Chandler Interview
Doug Burke:
If you've ever skied at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and skied down to the base of the tram, you've almost certainly heard Peter "Chanman" Chandler playing. The Chanman is a singer, songwriter, guitarist and bandleader living and performing in Jackson Hole, Wyoming for over 20 years. He performs as the frontman guitarist of the nine-piece roots reggae band, Chanman Roots Band and in the Tram Jam Band. A perennial winner of the Best Musician of Jackson Hole Award, Chanman's music has appeared in ski movies including Blinded by the White and Swift. Silent. Deep: The Story of the Jackson Hole Air Force. Chanman has opened for The Wailers, Damian Marley, the Violent Femmes, Robert Cray, Leon Russell, Robert Randolph and the Family Band, Greg Brown, The Skatalites, Los Lonely Boys, The Tamlins and many others.
Welcome to Back Story Song. I'm your host, Doug Burke. Today, I have Peter Chandler of many different bands, the Chanman Roots Band, Waist Deep, Tram Jam, your own eponymously named band, Chanman, with me. Welcome, Peter. Thank you for coming to Back Story Song.
Peter Chandler:
Hi, Doug. It's great to be here.
Doug Burke:
So, Peter, you are a fixture at Jackson Hole Mountain. Why don't you tell us how your band got to Jackson Hole?
Peter Chandler:
Well, I came to Jackson when I was 18 wanting to be a ski bum and I lived that life for a long time. I eventually went back to college and then went to graduate school. After that, I came back, we and a partner, I had a partner, Bradley Parker. We talked to the management and they had us play at the bottom of the tram dock every Saturday morning from 7:00 to 9:00, to kind of, oh, I don't know, appease the early tram line, people who get there early to catch the plow. Then we moved to the gondola. Over the years, we've gone from two people up to six people now. A couple of the members, Jeff Eidemiller, he's been there for over 20 years. Andy Peterson has been playing our drummer. He's been there for 20 years, so we have a longtime core. It's been a lot of fun. We play in all weather conditions.
Doug Burke:
The picture on our website has you with the icicle-covered face. I just love it. So if you've been to Jackson Hole, you've almost certainly seen Peter Chandler play his music and that's what we're here to talk about. You've been playing for over 25 years at Jackson Hole, both in the morning, noon, and night. You're the hardest working person in show business up there on the Jackson Hole scene with all your different bands playing many, many nights a week, 7:00 AM in the morning at the tramline, that's pretty impressive because that's all-weather conditions, I'm sure. So let's talk about some of your ski songs. You've written a handful of ski songs. Let's talk about Skis, Boots, Poles.
Peter Chandler:
Skis, Boots, Poles, people tell me they use them as a checklist for their kids in the morning. It originated, the captain of the Jackson Hole Air Force, Mr. Benny Wilson, he gave a hat to our drummer, Andy, and it had skis, boots, poles, and other items along with the hat, around the brim of the hat. As soon as I saw the hat, I was like, "Oh, I got to make a song up about that," So it's become a really popular song. It's a two-chord song, a three-chord song. The Chanman Roots Band and Tram Jam do a great job just kind of putting it out there as a fun, happy tune, trying to remember what you need in the morning before you get to the mountain.
Doug Burke:
You have a line in there, they go, "Bling, bling, bling, bong, bong, bong, bong, bling, bling." What's that about? Where did that come to you? What are you talking about there?
Peter Chandler:
A couple of things, it could be when you're waking up in the morning and you're waking up for an early tram and you're trying to get your roommate up and so maybe you're a little extra loud in the kitchen, but it can also be just from the reggae tradition. I'm in a reggae band and I listen to a lot of reggae and people like, oh, President Brown or Anthony B. Other songwriters like that will use that as part of the reggae sound.
Doug Burke:
So it's just silly words that you strung along and you decided to fit it into the song? Is-
Peter Chandler:
Just for fun. Just for fun.
Doug Burke:
A lot of your songs are fun. You guys have fun when you play.
Peter Chandler:
That was the original concept and we've tried to keep it whenever we can.
Doug Burke:
The chorus is, "I got my skis, boots, poles, pass." Why didn't you include “pass” in the title?
Peter Chandler:
No particular reason, I think, except for brevity. Was it an ode to our bad country brethren? I don't know. I certainly wanted it to be included, but I certainly wrote it about the resort.
Doug Burke:
I think this could be a theme song that we should get Vail or one of the other mountains, Vail resorts, to play at all their resorts because it is a universal ski song, right? It's not about cracks and holes, it's about the whole ski experience, a checklist for getting out there in the morning, right?
Peter Chandler:
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. One of my things, ever since I was a little kid, I've just loved the whole culture, the whole snow town culture. And anything I can do to celebrate that in song, I try to, for sure.
Doug Burke:
So you grew up in Maine where it's cold, right?
Peter Chandler:
I did. I grew up skiing at Sunday River, for the most part, in Sugarloaf.
Doug Burke:
What town named after a European city did you grow up in?
Peter Chandler:
I grew up in Falmouth -
Doug Burke:
Oh, Falmouth. You were named after a British town. I know they have Norway, Mexico and Paris and all those towns up there in that part of Maine, near those ski resorts, right?
Peter Chandler:
We have a lot of immigrants. Yes.
Doug Burke:
So you grew up learning to ski there and then you got the bug and said, "I got to try the Western stuff." Do you ever go back and ski the Eastern stuff?
Peter Chandler:
I did for a while. I haven't been back there for a while. I'm usually too busy to get that kind of time away now, but I love it back there. It was a great place to grow up and I love those resorts, but as soon as I was 18, I jumped in the car and came here.
Doug Burke:
So one of your lines is, "I get up in the morning in a tiny little hut. I see that it's snowing, insides go nuts." Is that ...?
Peter Chandler:
Yeah, for years I skied with butterflies.
Doug Burke:
Really?
Peter Chandler:
Just not sure what the day was going to bring and in terms of challenges and just having fun and just pushing yourself.
Doug Burke:
It's a feeling when you see that there's snow outside. Does it have to be fresh for you to get that butterfly feeling or is it just like waking up in the morning and you know you're going skiing?
Peter Chandler:
Well, I think one thing about the Rockies and other big mountain areas is that the technical train is always there to be challenging, whether it's power or whatever, there's always technical, fun to be had out there. But I love a powder day, of course, you can't beat it.
Doug Burke:
So that would take us to your next song ski when it's time.
Peter Chandler:
Well, actually that's a perfect segue way because yes, a powder day waits for no one. You either have to get it or you don't. This particular song is partly inspired by our mutual friend, Johnny Verdin.
Doug Burke:
He runs the open mic night up at the Mangy Moose-
Peter Chandler:
That's right.
Doug Burke:
... at Jackson Hole, right? It's a pretty compact music scene and that's where everybody goes, right?
Peter Chandler:
For sure. Yeah. No, the Moose is great and John runs a classic ski bum open mic, for sure. So good. But John loves the culture and he's a patroller and he knows how to get after it and he knows that a powder day is one of the best things on earth. John has been at a lot of early trams. One of the verses is about him. Actually, this story was in the paper where his girlfriend asked him for a second and he said, "A second here means the second tram," and so that's one of the verses in the song.
Doug Burke:
I see. The girlfriend, she just moving slowly says, "Hey, now. Give a second to me."
Peter Chandler:
Right. Yep.
Doug Burke:
"Johnny feels his senses jam. You knew a second here means a second tram."
Peter Chandler:
That's it. It's a little competitive in the morning, sometimes.
Doug Burke:
Well, I think by the third tram up at Jackson on a powder day, it's all gone, right?
Peter Chandler:
Well, it can be-
Doug Burke:
Unless you know where you're going, right?
Peter Chandler:
Unless you know where you're going, yeah. That's very true.
Doug Burke:
So this is about Johnny V.?
Peter Chandler:
Yeah. Johnny has just been really committed to the mountain and the lifestyle.
Doug Burke:
So you guys are a reggae ska band? When you write the songs, you have a full horn section. So talk to me about that, writing with a horn section and-
Peter Chandler:
Well, one of the concepts of the band for the beginning was to have a horn section. I do play with great musicians and so really it's up to the horn section, Paula Miller and John Kidwell, Rachel Gray Bundy, to come up with the lines and they use the rich reggae roots tradition to kind of call the appropriate lines. Well, they've been great. They're so good. So as a songwriter, for my bands, I basically, I write a complete song, for the most part, and then, everyone in the band writes their own specific parts. If I don't think it's right for the song, I may say something, but for the most part, I want them to be able to get their creative juices out there as well.
Doug Burke:
So one of your classic reggae songs of the band is New Uprising, wouldn't you say?
Peter Chandler:
Yes. Yes. I think it's an important tune.
Doug Burke:
Tell me why.
Peter Chandler:
Well, I feel like the environmental crisis is the elephant in the room and that we all recognize it, but nobody wants to make the hard choices in order to alleviate the problems. So New Uprising, just how dumb as it all become, no water to drink. The essential thing we need to live, we're ruining. That's just so crazy. I think part of the way to get there, part of the way to get to see the environmental crisis as not just hopelessness, as part of seeing some kind of solution, is having to have some kind of faith, faith in. Rastafari. But whatever faith that is, somehow, you have to get beyond a reason. You have to get beyond the mentality that says, "I can't do this. This is too big. I just can't, I can't deal with the situation, so I'm just going to pretend it's not happening." So the kind of faith that lets you get beyond reason and to be able to really listen from the heart is really going to be needed I think new uprising tries to address that.
Doug Burke:
So this is a call to arms, a call to action to save our environment?
Peter Chandler:
Yeah, for sure.
Doug Burke:
And you feel inspired to do that because of your faith in Rastafari?
Peter Chandler:
I do.
Doug Burke:
Explain that to me.
Peter Chandler:
Well, I grew up as a Christian and that's where my value and my belief system came from. Even though I went through a period in my teens and early 20s where I was agnostic at best, I've always known the value of some kind of faith. Then, I have a religion degree from college. I went to Marlboro College at Southern Vermont. So I went there to study to be a Christian minister and continued to see that, that just I seem to like people who were nicer when they had some kind of faith. It really wasn't much more complicated than that, that people seem to be nicer and I seem to like them more. So I went to college to study to be a Christian minister, but always challenging the faith. I always seemed to be the black sheep in whatever Christian gathering I was at. So over time, I found a way to, I guess, maintain that Christian faith, that Christian balance, that Christian, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," and the Christian belief in the paradox that the Christian belief in that Christ was both God and man, that Rastafari is both God and man, in the sense that it takes you beyond a reason because reason can't get you to that realization.
Doug Burke:
You write in New Uprising, "Just have the faith that you were put here for a reason. Just have the faith to go to hell and keep believing. Just have the faith to keep rising up yourself."
Peter Chandler:
So, yes, I guess I do believe that as part of my basic premise of life, I believe that the universe has consciousness, however, that manifests itself. I believe that it's based on physical laws and I believe it's based on moral laws and the moral laws are based on love. So I do feel that we were put here for a reason and that we're not random objects in the universe, however, we fulfill that destiny.
Doug Burke:
One of the reasons is that we need to have a new uprising to protect our earth.
Peter Chandler:
Right. Go to hell and keep believing. Go through hell, go through the feeling of hopelessness. I guess it keeps saying that the feeling of hopelessness keeps on going, right? Winston Churchill said, "When you get to hell, just keep on going and get to the other side so you can rise up and then make something happen."
Doug Burke:
"Get your strength from inside. Get your strength from worldwide. Get your strength, Rastafari give."
Peter Chandler:
Get your strength from on high, so get your strengths from a higher power or get your strength from God or whatever you want to call that. Get your strings from worldwide. Get your strength from whatever spiritual tradition or religion that talks to that inner voice inside you. I don't care whatever it is, whether this Rasta or whatever it is. So get it worldwide and take from whatever spiritual traditions speak to you.
Doug Burke:
So Peter, you went back after Marlboro College to Harvard, to divinity school.
Peter Chandler:
I did. I think about it a lot and I've also worked as a minister in different capacities off and on for a long time. Now I guess song or writing is my main ministry. I've got a bunch of new tunes that we were about to record right as the COVID thing hit, so we're on hold. I got a bunch of new tunes that are just on hold that deal with the faith issues.
Doug Burke:
Well, one of the songs you've sent to me is called Preacher. This clearly is about ministry, right?
Peter Chandler:
Yeah, about me, in particular, basically. Let the preacher just practice what he preaches. I think certainly when you're training to be a minister, when you're acting professionally as a minister, you can get awfully preachy and you can get, saying things that you know are true, but that maybe you're not following through in your personal life and that you really have to put your money where your mouth is. I think that continues to be a problem for everybody. Every once in a while, like Jeff, the guitar player for Tram Jam, we've been playing this song together since I wrote it, which was a long time ago. We continue to play it in Tram Jam. Jeff always reminds me about different aspects of it, including an old drummer of ours, who's a good friend of Jeff's who said, "Hey, wait a minute. This song is about you." I just had a light bulb go off over his head. I'm like, "Yeah. Yep."
Doug Burke:
"So many times I tried to look inside the Sacred Ark. So many times I left and watched the temple fall apart."
Peter Chandler:
Sacred Ark, I think of as the wisdom of the Israelites, the Sacred Ark. So, I tried to look inside the wisdom of the universe. So many times to look inside the temple and watch it fall apart. I tried to live up to a certain ideal and not just quite being able to live up to that ideal.
Doug Burke:
So you write in so many styles. We've talked a lot about your reggae ska material, so far, always is in a different vein.
Peter Chandler:
I guess, so I think of it as in the Bob Marley tradition somehow, but maybe not necessarily that kind of reggae.
Doug Burke:
So what are you trying to say here in Always? What's the message of Always?
Peter Chandler:
The message of Always is that reggae is a powerful force, there’s always going to be a little trouble, but reggae and your faith and love, in particular, is going to rise you above that rebel. So be nice, because you get the feeling inside you and be nice so you get the feeling beside you, so be nice. Try to find that inside you, but it's not always easy.
Doug Burke:
This is very classically Bob Marley inspired?
Peter Chandler:
Kind of, yeah.
Doug Burke:
Did you grow up listening to a lot of Bob's music?
Peter Chandler:
Well, before college, I played a lot of hacky sack, so a professional footbag player for a little bit.
Doug Burke:
Get out. There is such a thing? Professional hacky sack leagues?
Peter Chandler:
Well, it depends on how you want to say, 'professional,' but-
Doug Burke:
Can you make a living at it?
Peter Chandler:
Well, again, it depends on what you want to call, 'a living.' I can make a hundred bucks and go to the next tournament.
Doug Burke:
Wow.
Peter Chandler:
There are super good people and now, the sport is crazy. The people are so good.
Doug Burke:
I didn't know there was such a thing. So playing hacky sack got you into Bob Marley. Give me the connection there.
Peter Chandler:
Just because it was great to kick to.
Speaker 2:
Oh, gosh. I got it.
Peter Chandler:
That's all. It was great to kick to Bob Marley and kick to the Grateful Dead. Then for me, that got me to know about the whole reggae and Rastafarian thing. I had a professor in college named Jed Thomas, who also turned me on to the religious aspects of Rastafari.
Speaker 2:
Is one of the Rastafari messages to keep it nice? That's what you're saying here in this song.
Peter Chandler:
One of the Rastafari messages to keep it nice. The opposite of that is to fight for your rights. So you have to find your balance. Too, but also to keep it nice is so hard. It's not just a trivial thing. It's so hard because you have to give up judgment. That's hard.
Doug Burke:
You sent me a song, which is actually one of my favorites out of everything that you sent me, Just An Illusion. This reminds me of Graham Parker. It's different. It's like you rock out on this song in a way that's ... I don't know if it is Graham Parker inspired, but ...
Peter Chandler:
It's not Graham Parker inspired, although, when I wrote the tune, my guitar partner was listening to a lot of Graham Parker at the time.
Doug Burke:
You and your band remind me of Southside Johnny and Graham Parker and when you rock out like this with this horn section, that's cool. You don't see a lot of horn sections in bands, especially these days when it's hard to make it with a big lineup, but ...
Peter Chandler:
Well, it's true. It is hard, but it's such a treat.
Doug Burke:
So tell me about Just An Illusion. What's this about?
Peter Chandler:
Just An Illusion, kind of about the Buddhist concept of illusion, that life is an illusion and that your sense of attachment or your sense of non-attachment is what's going to define your reality. It's how you see the world. It's going to define how you see the world. So at the time, I think I had worked on the verse about a plane. I had been working at a homeless shelter in White River Junction in Vermont. I met this guy who had crashed a plane and he couldn't get over it.
Doug Burke:
Wow. He was the pilot?
Peter Chandler:
Yeah. The pilot, he had become homeless kind of because he couldn't deal with it anymore. That got me playing the whole song for some reason, even though it's only one verse in the song.
Doug Burke:
"It's just an illusion you were flying the plane. It's just an illusion that there's no one to blame. No, it always feels tough to find my way, but it's just an illusion at the end of the day."
Peter Chandler:
So even something as horrific as that.
Doug Burke:
But this is a Buddhist-inspired song.
Peter Chandler:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
Religion permeates your music, but you've studied Buddhism as well?
Peter Chandler:
I have. I studied a lot of Buddhism. I've never been a practicing Buddhist before, but I've always been drawn to the Buddhist aspects of Christianity and of Rastafarianism. So that made me delve into Buddhism more, as well as I've worked on different peace protests in the past and oftentimes we work with the Buddhist community too.
Doug Burke:
Then your chorus here, "Live a dream. Dream a life of love. Oh, yeah." That's a great message, right?
Peter Chandler:
Yeah. Live a dream. Dream a life of love. We've all got our challenges, but I think that's one of the goals for sure.
Doug Burke:
And this is played by Waist Deep?
Peter Chandler:
Yep. Waist Deep, we haven't played for a long time, but a lot of those tunes, like I said, they live on in Tram Jam.
Doug Burke:
As a sort of sequel to Waist Deep?
Peter Chandler:
Yeah. It's kind of a ... yeah.
Doug Burke:
And they're a little less reggae-oriented?
Peter Chandler:
I think at the time, we billed ourselves as raging, reggae and rock.
Doug Burke:
When did you start writing songs and why did you start writing songs?
Peter Chandler:
I began writing songs in high school. One of my good buddies growing up, Arson Napolitano, always wanted to be a rock star, always wanted to be a rock guitarist and so he kind of made me his singer. So I began writing songs just for us to play together and we played together through high school. Then after high school, I went to Boston and played in a rock band with him for a while, continued to write tunes. Then I came out here and then I continued to write tunes. Even when I've gone through periods where I really haven't had any idea why I was writing tunes, I've never quit. I write it from my ministry. I write it to say, I think it should be said, I do it to celebrate what I love, ski bum culture. I think our culture has a lot of worth and a lot of value and I want to celebrate that.
Doug Burke:
What makes a song worthy? What's the criteria?
Peter Chandler:
Sometimes what makes a song worthy is having the courage to say what everybody feels, but nobody wants to say. That's one of the jobs of the songwriter is to express the emotions and the pondery that makes you feel so vulnerable, but to try to have the courage to express that because no other people will be able to connect to that too, if you have the courage to put it out there. I think that's true.
Doug Burke:
All your songs is my standard backstory song question. Is there any song that if you could pick the dream voice to sing that song, what song would you pick of yours and what voice would you want to sing it?
Peter Chandler:
When I think of say, New Uprising, I would love to hear Chronixx play that. Are you familiar with Chronixx?
Doug Burke:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Peter Chandler:
I love what he has to say. I love his songwriting. I love his voice. I would love to hear his take on the song, I guess.
Doug Burke:
He could get the message about saving the earth out there to a big audience. Well, I'd love to hear that. That's a great idea. My last question, Peter, when you're writing a song, how do you know when it's done?
Peter Chandler:
I guess I have two answers for that. Now more recently, when I write tunes, I write with a band in mind. So for those types of situations, I need to take it to the band and have the band play it for a little bit to see what works and what doesn't work because sometimes I think, "Ah, this is going to be a perfect bridge for the band," and it just falls flat, right? So it's just like, "Ah, come on. I thought that was going to be great." But you never know until the band actually plays it as a group. So I think that's one of the ways I know it's finished is if I can take it to the band and it clicks with the band and all the parts kind of fall into place. I go, "All right. That's awesome." But oftentimes, we have to modify it. You have to fine tune it, make it so it fits the band as well as your intentions.
Doug Burke:
Do you ever change it based on the feedback from the audience at the Mangy Moose or at the bottom of the tram?
Peter Chandler:
Some songs I've played in front of people so much that I know, "Oh, maybe this little part doesn't work," and I'll go back and try to fix it. You hate to take people to an emotional place and then somehow take that away from them with a bad transition part or something, that takes them out of the moment that takes them out of the magic of it all. So I try to eliminate those parts which take people out of the moment. Oftentimes, if I'm writing a tune, sometimes I'll write it quickly, but other times, man, I'll have a great A part, but I just can't find the B part and I'll wait. I'll wait until I can find the right B part. I'll be, "No, this A section is too good." I can’t have a mediocre B part, right?
Doug Burke:
One other thing and I just remembered I want to cover. I really love the harmonies in your song and I guess it's Molly Moon Thorn who contributes a lot of these for you? She's your harmonizing vocalist? How do you put those together? Tell me about that. Do you write thinking this requires a harmony part or ...?
Peter Chandler:
I don't. I've been singing with people for so long that I write kind of thinking, "Oh, I hope they do a nice part to this," but I don't write thinking of that. And Molly is so good at just hearing the harmony as well as Andy Peterson, our drummer. Rachel Gray Bundy also does harmonies and John Kidwell in the band. So it is a group of different people that will do harmonies at different times, even though Molly is the main figure.
Doug Burke:
I have to thank you, Peter, "The Chanman" Chandler, who's the head of Chanman Roots Band, also Waist Deep and Tram Jam and his own eponymous Chanman, which is more jazz-oriented. If you ever get to Jackson Hole and get a chance to see him and his group, I highly encourage it. Peter, is there anyone you'd like to thank in our episode here or anything you'd like to promote coming up?
Peter Chandler:
Well, I'd like to thank all the promoters in Jackson for sharing all the musicians I play with. I'd like to thank my wife, Kathy, who supports me in all these endeavors, as well as I'm playing every Wednesday and Saturday nights out at Hayden's Post; playing every Tuesday at the Snake River Brew Pub; playing every Sunday at Melvin's Brewing in Alpine, Wyoming and every other Friday night at the Teton Pines Country Club.
Doug Burke:
There's an incredible music scene going on up there in Jackson Hole. It is because of you and your friends and we thank you for that. I'd like to thank DJ Wyatt Schmidt for helping me always, the master recording artist. Thank you, everybody.
