Chris Gantry
Nashlantis

The rediscovery of Chris Gantry is owed to Drag City Records. It was the Chicago label that brought to light the recordings of the singer-songwriter born in Queens, New York in 1942 and recorded at the home of Johnny Cash and June Carter ("The House Of Cash") in the early seventies. More precisely, in 1973, shortly after his release from prison, where he was incarcerated for drug possession.

Indeed, Chris Gantry was the typical wild child: in the early sixties, inspired by the beat literature myth, he left everything and went to Nashville to follow in the footsteps of his idols from Elvis to Jerry Lee, from Johnny Cash to Gene Vincent. In truth, let's say that more than following in their footsteps, Chris soon found himself among them: he was the youngest of them all, but he joined their circle and was welcomed among everyone. The fact that today, more than fifty years after the release of his historic hit "Dreams of the Everyday Housewife" (Capitol, 1968), he has written over 1,000 songs, many of which have been recorded and performed by artists of the caliber of Johnny Cash himself or Kris Kristofferson, Sonny Curtis, and Johnny Lee, or Glen Campbell, who performed the already mentioned hit and earned him the award for best songwriter of the Nashville scene in 1968.

However, his fame never took off and even after the release of the album recorded at Johnny Cash and June Carter's house, we cannot speak of his rediscovery as having given him the same glory that has been rightfully restored over the years to various artists like Bill Fay or Linda Perhacs. Well, this is probably due to the particular dimension of the Nashville myth, which remains a myth and as such, is timeless, just as it can be said that Chris Gantry himself is an integral part of this mythology, or better yet, let's say he is immersed in it up to his neck. Even more so.

Thus, this record is called "Nashlantis" and it is not the album of an outsider, but of an insider, a guy who like many during those years, wanted to follow a dream inspired by that myth he cultivated and immersed himself fully into, right down to its darkest nature. The style is characteristic of the marked Nashville sound. There are eleven ballads for folk guitar and of that genre which is defined as "outlaw country." The context is there, the songs have an essential structure, clearly built on the sound of the guitar and Chris's "gravelly" voice, which captures all the different nuances of the genre, from its more romantic to melancholic aspects, and then the wilder and even psychedelic shades.

It seems that Kris Kristofferson considers him the greatest songwriter he has ever known. This record is beautiful, and what makes it special is the fact that it is not a collection, but eleven new songs. They are not an demonstration of tenacity or a pretense of revivalism; they are the manifesto of someone who wanted to become a country music star, and then became Nashville itself.