T.O. Talks to Musicians #2: Kris Demeanor

Meeting, for the first time, someone I've known for 30 years

Jun 04, 2024

(I recently realized that my lifelong rule of never talking to musicians was idiotic. So, to learn how to get over myself, I had a beer with Rich Paxton. lead singer of Free the Cynics, who I had only recently become aware of. It went so well that I jumped into the deep end this time. I had a beer with Kris Demeanor, a musician I have watched fanatically for most of 30 years.)

Kris Demeanor knows how to make an entrance

They say people judge you within the first five minutes of meeting you. If that’s true, Kris Demeanor won himself a gold medal with his entrance. Walking up to our table in the Two House Brewing, bike helmet in hand, his first words were that I reminded him of Luke Skywalker. (What he actually said was that we both look a little too much like the old and haggard Skywalker from the third Star Wars trilogy, which was on the TV behind us at that moment, but I heard what I wanted to hear.) Then he asked the server what she had in the way of an IPA - the one true drink. And before the five minutes were up he was expressing his passionate dislike of Great Big Sea - Canada’s most regrettable musical gift to the world. Short of wearing a The Watchmen t-shirt, no one could do any better than that.

Kris Demeanor lives in my head

It would have been easy for Kris to think that I was a stalker. I emailed him out of the blue, and asked to buy him a beer. Then, over the next couple of hours it likely became clear that I knew more about his career than any grown man should know about another living man. To his credit, though, he never seemed remotely bothered by it, and I never once noticed him scoping out the available escape routes.

We established that the first time I had seen Tinderbox, the first band of his I was aware of - though not, as I believed until this day, his first band - was on New Year’s eve in 1995. It was in a rehearsal space in the bowels of the performing arts centre in Calgary. I don’t know what led my friend Kirsten and I to choose that show from the dozens that were offered during that end of year festival. But whatever the act of karma or fate, it set off a nearly 30 year (so far) string of watching him perform any chance I got. First with Tinderbox, then with The Crack Band, then with Cutest Kitten Ever, and solo during and after those times. And in plays and other appearances along the way, too. I don’t know how many times it’s been in total, but every time I think of it, I think of another venue, another show, another occasion. It has to be north of 30 times over the years. He’s my second most watched artist - behind only The Watchmen. And the gap between the two could be pretty tight.

It was odd meeting him. So very odd. I feel like he’s an old friend - someone I have known forever. And his friends and family - too. His sister, Monika, was in Tinderbox with him. I’ve seen his parents at shows, and heard songs and stories about them. His brother-in-law, Greg, is a local concert promoter who has been responsible for countless shows I have been at. His former bandmates are active in the city, and we often see them performing somewhere or another. There are several bands we see now that we first saw because they were playing on bills with Kris. He’s at the top of a musical tree for me - a large, gnarled oak with many branches and stories to tell.

And I think of all the people I have shared him with. Those who were frequent companions at his shows. Those lucky women who saw him because a Kris Demeanor show was a guaranteed good date - despite the company they were stuck with. Friends who got dragged along to his shows - and always left the show happier. Both my parents saw him with me - the only of my top tier, favorite artists that has that distinction. His shows were a constant touchpoint - a star that my social life orbited around for many years.

And that wasn’t just me. Tricia has her stories, her own tree. And we’ve talked countless times about the shows we were both at, years before we met and got married, both there with people who are still close friends now. Our shared love for Kris Demeanor shows was the first real ice breaker on our first date. And it’s been an automatic date any time we saw he was playing anywhere ever since. We would have had our first dance at our wedding to her favorite song of his if I had been even remotely capable of dancing to it.

But, through all of this, in a development that can’t be of any surprise to you by this point, the first words I said to him that afternoon at the brewery were the first I had ever said to him. There have been countless times when I could easily have said something to him. Times when we were in a small room with just a few people. Or at Folk Fest where he was wandering around as a fan like I was. It’s an insane failing on my part that I never once even said hi. Or told him how great his show had been, or how excited I was about the show to come. Or just shared a joke and moved on. It would have been so easy - except for those rules of mine about not talking to musicians that ruled my head and shut down my brain. Yet more proof that I’m an idiot.

Kris Demeanor’s name isn't actually Kris Demeanor

There are actually people out there, according to Kris, who believe that he just was lucky to be born with such a cool sounding last name. Sometimes the most obvious things aren’t actually obvious at all.

Before I met up with Kris, I texted a few friends who are also fans to ask them what they would like to know. Two had the same answer - when and why did Kris Wenzel morph into his current form? I asked, imagining an elaborate origin story. There really wasn't one. When Tinderbox wound down, he started playing solo. Wenzel didn't sound like a rock star name, so he tried to think up alternatives. His brother in law was booking him for a show opening for Rufus Wainwright, so Kris let him come up with a name. He picked Kris Meridian. That lasted one show. Thankfully. And then, at some point, he just thought of Demeanor, liked it, and here we are.

Some family members weren’t too fond of him turning his back on the family name, and were skeptical of the whole musician thing. That mostly changed in a flash, though, when he landed a starring role in a national commercial. McCain had a new BBQ chicken pizza, and having him sing Yellow Rose of Texas to a group of people chowing down on pizza at sundown in front of a fake barn seemed to them like the perfect way to launch it. His credibility with his extended family reached permanent new heights. Sadly, the pizza was lousy, and the launch flopped, so it wasn’t the financial windfall it could have been. Kris laughed, perhaps a little embarrassed, when I asked about the commercial - you can’t forget it once you see it, but he’d probably be happier if everyone did. But it gave him some great stories, and he relished telling them. The things you do for art.

There is a pair of signature leather shoes - grey and white by my memory, and looking a bit like they were stolen from a bowling alley - that Kris often wore when playing with the Crack Band. I asked if those were like Clark Kent’s glasses - he put them on, and Kris Wenzel the guy became Kris Demeanor the super performer. Nothing so dramatic, sadly. He did embrace that there was a bit of an alter ego effect with the name at first, but the shoes - or anything else material - weren’t the key to the transition.

There is a pretty amazing story about those shoes, though. They came from his roommate of long ago, Leslie, who worked at a thrift shop. Leslie is now known to the world as Feist - perhaps the most influential musician ever to come from Calgary. She was the lead singer of a great punk band called Placebo back then - sounding very little like she does today. My favorite part of the story, though, is not that she gave him the shoes, but how they came to live together. I imagined some interaction in the green room of some smoky bar somewhere. It turns out, though, that Kris’ dad had been her high school art teacher, liked her - more than he liked her music back then - and told Kris, who had just returned from a year busking in Europe, that she needed a roommate. Wilf Wenzel, artist and realtor to the stars.

Kris Demeanor isn’t bitter

Kris saw Elvis Costello in concert a while back. He’s a big fan, so he was obviously excited. But, he admitted, he was a bit frustrated that Costello played too much of the new stuff he was working on. Kris wanted to hear the old stuff that had connected him to the artist at a cellular level back in the day. As a fellow obsessive fan it’s something I can very much relate to. We talked about how we both think about such things often, trying to balance new with old, nostalgia with exploration, reliving old memories with building new ones.

This was a very strange conversation to have with this particular person. This thought struck me at the exact moment when, after talking about his new album and other work, I enthusiastically asked if we'd ever see a Crack Band reunion. Enough of the new, Elvis, when can I hear the old?!

Kris Demeanor and the Crack Band were a marvel to see live. Four very good musicians with even better chemistry. The shows were always the same yet different. They were just such fun. But as I was asking the question I felt instantly guilty. Was longing for another look at a band that meant so much to my past lessening the work that he has done since, and will do going forward? Was my nostalgia for past sounds and experiences, and everything that is filed alongside that in my brain, having too much of an impact on my desires? Or is devotion to a past ideal a compliment to an artist that is unrelated to what they have done since? I don’t know where that balance is.

At their peak, The Crack Band frequently played well attended gigs in Calgary, and would tour around western Canada and, sometimes, far beyond. But they never truly took off. They weren’t particularly radio friendly, and were straddling genres, so they had to win people over one by one. That takes a whole lot of work, and isn’t a great way to make an easy living. And, Kris admitted, as they got into their later 30s, the prospect of sleeping on someone’s couch and waking up to a strange dog licking your face lost the appeal it once had. But two hotel rooms every night slices into already tight touring margins, and it just doesn’t make enough sense after a while. They were neither big enough nor small enough to maintain the status quo. The death of too many bands.

I asked Kris if he was bitter about how things turned out - that they hadn’t gotten bigger. Or that the two bands before, and the one band after, hadn’t either. I asked for a simple reason - I’m bitter about it to this day. Not nearly enough people got to enjoy what they could do, and how they could make people feel. Bands I love should be huge, and stinking rich. It’s just how it should be. But justice and the music world are not at all aligned.

Kris Demeanor is a better man than me. His answer was instant, enthusiastic, and completely believable. He’s not bitter. Almost euphorically not bitter, in fact. Sure, there are people he knows of, or knows personally, who have success that he might feel more deserving of at times. But they also have bigger headaches, bigger expectations, and bigger frustrations. Perspective is such a hard thing to have no matter where you are at, too - Kris has felt jealous of a colleague’s success at the same time as they were wondering when they might finally start being successful.

What happened with each of his bands made everything that has happened since possible. The people he met then are the collaborators, mentors, friends and clients he has now. He was Calgary’s first Poet Laureate from 2012-2014 - a title that has opened more doors since then than anything else, oddly enough. That wouldn’t have happened without The Crack Band. He built a life on those foundations. A different fate would lead to a different life, but he isn’t at all convinced it would be a better one. That’s a pretty good place to be.

About that reunion? Maybe, but a stronger maybe now than it has been for a long while.

Kris Demeanor thinks about death a lot

When he was 15, he and a few friends formed Alchemy - a band that was, they were certain, going to define the Calgary sound for decades to come. They practiced three times a week, played as much as they could, and recorded a couple of records. Kris says it was the best way to hang out with friends you could imagine. But it was also something they took very seriously, and had big dreams for. That I had never heard of Alchemy until this night, though, tells you too much, sadly, about how things turned out.

Songs for My Father To Fall Asleep To is Kris’ latest album, out this past spring. He wrote it as a collection of almost-lullabies for his late father, when he was sick and struggling to sleep through the pain. It’s a beautiful and, frankly, brutal collection of tunes. I had noticed the hauntingly plain piano that opens the first track, but hadn’t thought much of it. I was too busy getting my guts ripped out by The Tennis Song. Kris and his dad loved playing tennis, and an older favorite of mine, called I Have Seen The Future, is a hilarious tale of one of their games together. I thought that The Tennis Song would be a version of that tale when I first pressed play. It’s really, really not. It’s sad, and you don’t have to know what it’s really about to know that it came from a dark place, or out of a dark time.

In The Tennis Song is the line “Andrew’s here”. Andrew was a dear childhood friend, and the keyboard player for Alchemy. He died of cancer a while back, but not before he and Kris recorded some of his piano playing so his wife and kids could have it for years to come. That’s where that opening piano on the album came from. Andrew’s there.

We talked more than once about Andrew over our time together. And about Kris’ dad. And his mom, who died in 2010. His grandparents, who sound like characters in a gripping novel. And my parents, who are both long gone. And of another dear friend, mentor and collaborator who had died this spring after a short and horrific battle with cancer - forcing the postponement of a play the two were supposed to be in together. A lot of death. And it’s clearly sitting heavy on his mind, the volume of it mingling with those inevitable side effects of age and imagination that you can’t avoid at 55 and couldn’t conceive of at 25.

I had a blue notebook with me when we met. I never opened it - largely because he was too much of a puzzle to me to have written down much to ask him in advance. Also, I didn’t want him to sneak a peek at what little was written in it. He would have seen that one of the few things I had scribbled down before meeting him was a question: IS HE OKAY?? It was written in all-caps, and underlined twice.

I’ve loved so much of his work over the years because it is both thoughtful and fun - a party for smart kids. Much of what I have seen in recent times has felt just as thoughtful, but seriousness, and often sadness, has often replaced the overt fun. I wanted to know if he felt that. Or if I was imagining it - if I was just reflecting what I was feeling as I was fighting against my own aging through acts both subtle and more drastic.

Kris Demeanor is okay. I’m very confident in that now. I knew it in an instant. The answer slapped me in the face as I was dancing around what exactly to ask. It was obvious, but only if I let myself get over myself.

Kris Demeanor is human. Just a guy. That shouldn’t be such a revelation to me. But it really is. I’ve spent so long watching him, and admiring him, and distancing myself from him, that I thought of him as this special, sainted performer. Not as a guy like me - a lifelong Calgarian who loves music, loves his city as much as he hates and is confused by it, wants to be a good father, partner and friend, and misses his parents. In my mind, talking to him was, for so many years, an impossible thing to do. But it was really just as simple as trying. Reaching out to him. Sending a freaking email.

He’s a guy going through some stuff, like all of us, all the time. It’s not all bad by any means. I don’t even think it’s close to mostly bad. He has a partner who is a writer, with a new book being celebrated at major award banquets. And a three year old daughter. He is clearly completely taken by both. And his eyes lit up many times when he was talking about work he was doing now, and work he wants to do in the future. [I’m just going to say that he basically guaranteed that he is going to do a punk album soon, and not mention the context that it was said in. It’s in print now, so it has to happen.]

And, as happens to humans, what interests and excites him, and what he wants to create and say, shifts and changes with time. So, the fact that his work has changed and evolved and shifted over the years isn’t a sign that maybe he’s not okay. It’s a sign that he is more than okay. He’s expressing what he feels, exploring, and pursuing what makes him happy.

It’s all so obvious. But you have to pull your head out of your own ass so you can see it.

Kris Demeanor is a songwriter

After a couple of really great hours of hearing stories about what he had done, was doing, and what he was thinking about doing, I was left with one question.

What are you?

I wanted to see how he defined himself. He thought about it for a long time. He tried a few things on for size before rejecting them. Then he proclaimed that he is a songwriter. Everything that he creates - poems, plays, prose, music, acting - it’s all just songs in the end in his mind. The presentation is just different from case to case.

I can get behind that. But it’s not the answer I would give if I tried to put myself in his shoes.

When he was 31, Kris cut his finger hanging drywall for his day job. He had a gig that night, and bandmate Chantal had to be the lone guitarist because he couldn’t play with a bandage on. He decided right then that both drywall and real jobs weren’t for him. And he hasn’t dealt with either since. Like a few other artists I admire so much, he has found ways - some more conventional than others - to make it work since then. To balance creativity and the requirements of life. I’m as certain that it wasn’t the easiest path to choose as I am that it was the only one he could have chosen - and that he’s the only one that could ever choose that same path. And that, to me, is the answer right there.

Kris Demeanor is a Kris Demeanor.

The details: Kris Demeanor, Two House Brewing, Tuesday, May 28, 2024. 5 pm.

Up next: A journey into the world of emo - a musical mega-trend I somehow missed entirely when it happened - on Sunday night.