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Chris McQueen
Chris grew up in Austin, TX and started playing guitar and recording songs on a 4-track Tascam around age 10. At 13 he joined RedHeaded Stepchild, a western swing kid band, and started gigging around Austin and learning how to solo from bandmate and guitar prodigy Will Knaak. This interest in improvisation led Chris to jazz; he joined and wrote for his high school jazz band, and later attended the University of North Texas to study with Fred Hamilton. He eventually played in the One O’Clock Lab Band and wrote a piece that was recorded for Lab 2006.
Chris remained in the Dallas area for four years after college, co-leading the regionally popular rock band Oso Closo with singer/songwriter Adrian Hulet, and studying music with Bernard Wright and other members of the Dallas R&B/jazz/Gospel scene. Oso Closo performed on stage in The Who’s Tommy at the Dallas Theater Center and released two albums. After Oso Closo broke up, Chris and fellow band member Danny Garcia joined with singer/songwriter Cade Sadler to form Foe Destroyer, which produced one album, toured for several years, and performed on stage in Dallas and NYC in the musical Fly By Night.
Chris lives in Austin, TX with his wife Erin. Aside from gigging and recording he writes sheet music for Snarky Puppy and others, and he created arrangements and sounds for the new musical Bunkerville. He has also been working on an upcoming solo album, and he plays in an original acoustic guitar duo with fellow Austinite Matt Read that released its debut album Western Theatre last year. He has been producing videos for Guitar Note Atlas, which will be receiving a major update this year and finally coming to Android devices.
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Bokante: History
by Chris May
Snarky Puppy leader Michael League does not like the band being called a jazz ensemble. He describes it as a “a pop band that improvises a lot, without vocals." But anyone listening to jazz through the aural equivalent of a wide-angle lens would likely keep Snarky Puppy in the picture. League's spin-off group Bokante improvises little and has vocals front and centre. The connection with jazz is more tenuous. Bokante could be called a “world music" group ...
read moreSnarky Puppy: Empire Central
by Angelo Leonardi
A diciotto anni dalla nascita, gli Snarky Puppy sono tornati a Dallas —luogo d'origine della formazione— per registrare un nuovo album scegliendo l'approccio preferito: quel “live in the studio" con pubblico in sala che ha caratterizzato le loro opere migliori. Quindi otto notti alla Deep Ellum Art Company per mettere a punto 16 nuovi brani, ora pubblicati in doppio album, in triplo vinile. Il disco privilegia il ritorno ai valori musicali originari: una fusion ...
read moreSnarky Puppy: Immigrance
by Josh Deakin
Three years after their last release, Snarky Puppy's thirteenth studio album Immigrance makes a statement as a standard for jazz fusion that all modern artists should take note of. The opening track, “Chonks," sets the tone of the record with a fierce drum fill from Larnell Lewis which is reminiscent of reggae tones, an aesthetic which Snarky Puppy enjoy teasing on occasion. The record keeps pace as it weaves together the collection of songs which gives the illusion ...
read moreChris McQueen: Snarky Guitars, Part 3
by Mike Jacobs
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 For our final installment in the Snarky Guitars series, All About Jazz spoke with Chris McQueen. McQueen's inclinations as a player often push him into more textural, integral and rhythmic roles that sometimes leave him the least conspicuous of the “SP Three," but he has done much to challenge that perception in recent times. In addition to his continuing work with Snarky Puppy and Bokante, McQueen released an enthralling acoustic ...
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