CHRIS KEATS: BIO
Chris Keats grew up on the edge of the North Sea, in a small town where the winters were longer than the summers and the sky rarely blue. Having lived with a debilitating stutter most of his life, writing poetry, and later song lyrics, became Chris' way of expressing himself in a world that didn't have time for him to speak. He spent his childhood playing football and pounding out songs on the family's plastic organ. One day, his next-door neighbour, a recovering alcoholic and retired boxer, found a guitar in the street and gave it to Chris. Energized by the afternoons spent on his neighbour's livingroom floor listening to his complete Bruce Springsteen album collection, Chris taught himself how to play. Aged 9, he wrote his first song, a hobby he refined in his late teens with the help of a salvaged piano dumped by a local school.
After finishing school, he moved to London to pursue a career as a singer, but instead ended up working as a songwriter and indie music producer. His songs were recorded by a number of singers from around the world, but after being blackmailed by a publishing company he left the music business, deleted his online presence and stopped writing songs. The piano he once salvaged ended up as firewood in a dignified Christmas ceremony.
After meeting the love of his life, they decided to write and release a Christmas duet in 2021 as Enamour Avenue, in support of a suicide prevention charity. Magic Spell of X-mas was independently released, by a secret duo without any promotion, and even inspired a £5,000 donation from Amazon UK. The unexpected response motivated Chris to start writing new songs, and in 2022 he released his first solo single, for the first time making music on his own terms, in his own name.
His poetic debut single Anything We Dream was driven by a raw piano-and-vocals-only performance, and his second single Marry Me was a euphoric pop proposal. The third single I'll Never Let You Go presents an irresistible Motown beat behind his conversational but energetic vocals, and with his fourth single, the erotically charged Midnight Sun he takes us on an almost religious odyssey exploring the landscapes of physical intimacy. Fith single Real Thing is a ghostly look at modern society, and has Chris digging deeper into his folk-rock roots.
The songs reveal the eclectic musical inspirations from his childhood - the Clash albums lent to him aged 7 by his sister's boyfriend, his brother's vintage Beatles and David Bowie albums, the Springsteen collection of his next-door neighbour, and the introduction to Leonard Cohen songs he got from a chain-smoking school librarian when borrowing a Bob Dylan song book. Chris' unique sense of melody, harmony and rhyhtm - both memorable and timeless, catchy and surprising - also shows the influence of an old secondary school music teacher who keenly lectured the class on Frank Zappa, jazz and musical theatre such as Threepenny Opera by Brecht/Weill, Hair and Grease. Curious by nature, Chris discovered reggae through punk, folk through John Martyn, blues through Bob Dylan, and for each song he's released he's displaying a deeper and fuller version of himself. His first album, released on 4 September 2024, coudldn't get a more suitable title: Phoenix.
Chris has also published a book, A Less Full Mind, which is a mindfulness guide for beginners.
