Craig Owens: Microphone Psychology
When he’s fronting Chiodos, CRAIG OWENS seems larger than life. But even the most ebullient personalities want to dial things down a bit. That’s why Owens is unveiling CINEMATIC SUNRISE-along with a few other things. STORY: Mike Shea PHOTOS: Phil Mucci
At the Atlanta Warped Tour date in July 2007, someone wanted to kill Craig Owens. It wasn’t a member of another band who had too much to drink or some disgruntled fan who liked Chiodos before the singer got “egotistical.” Those suspects were simply too plausible. It turned out that Owens’ would-be assailant was an ex-Marine with unknown motives. Tipped off by local friends the night before, Owens spent the whole day escorted through the show grounds by Atlanta police and Warped security, without incident.
“It threw me for such a loop,“ says Owens, reflecting on the whole experience shaking his head and smiling. “Even during our set, I was cautious about each and every person [I encountered]. I didn’t even go into the crowd. It was pretty scary because I have the body of a 12-year-old girl,” he says, laughing.
It’s the kind of situation that Owens could’ve expected since his rise as the Davison, Michigan, native who grew from being a nerdy, slightly co-dependent kid in school, to one of the scene’s biggest personalities. A large throat tattoo of the word “Sincerity” (suggested by his therapist) blatantly reminds everyone standing in front of him that whatever comes out of Owens’ mouth is most likely going to be the truth. Straightforward but overly empathic, Owens summarizes his mindset with an often-repeated phrase that provides a mea culpa of sorts: “You either love me or hate me. There’s really no in-between it seems.”
The accidental child of parents who divorced when he was 2 years old, Owens grew up in a crowded two-bedroom apartment with his remarried mom and a younger brother, Travis. By middle school, young Craig was frequently running off to the Barn Of Doom, a venue 25 miles away in Holly, or the Local 432 in Flint to see then-nascent bands like My Chemical Romance. He became hooked on the emotive release singing gave him. He studied his idols (notably Gerard Way and Bert McCracken), turned his journal entries into lyrics and began fostering an ambitious drive to dedicate his life to music. Completely driven to pursue a career in music by the time he started high school, Owens spent many days recording Chiodos Bros. demos with bassist Matt Goddard (whom he met in high school concert band) in the bedroom of guitarist Pat McManaman’s “punk-rock house,” and sneaking away to the music room during lunch period with barbershop duet/choir partner choir partner Bradley Bell to pound out Saves The Day covers. In 2002, Bell and his Roland keyboard were eventually invited to a Chiodos Bros. practice, and within three years, Chiodos-fortified with a shortened name and Texas transplants Derrick Frost and Jason Hale-were signed to Equal Vision, where they’ve been kicking ass and taking names ever since.
Owens cherishes his DIY background (Chiodos Bros. sold over 10,000 EPs with no distribution deal; packing 500-capacity rooms while tour managing the band’s 13 U.S. tours before being signed by EVR), but since Chiodos’ 2005 full-length debut, All’s Well That Ends Well, he’s chosen to step onto an accelerated treadmill belt that’s taking him into sectors of the music business where he simply doesn’t swim well. Sometimes too blunt, sometimes too honest, sometimes caring too much, Owens garnered a reputation within band-gossip circles as an asshole cloaked in his own self-importance. But these rumors were unverifiable: He was also well known for his fan-friendliness, never turning down an opportunity to pose for a photo, sign an autograph or carry a conversation.
As Chiodos took off, an emotionally vulnerable Owens-further complicated by his self-professed deep fear of failure-wasn’t prepared for the pressure, criticism and attendant culture that come with success. Regressively tip-toeing around music-business people and various hangers-on, he began to avoid most of them altogether, usually climbing into his bunk on the bus after a show while the rest of Chiodos partied on up front. "One of my favorite lyrics I’ve ever written is from ‘Intensity In Ten Cities’ where it goes, "Every time I walk into a room/A silence so sudden, that I seem to hear it.’ It describes [that feeling] where you walk into a room and all of a sudden it’s like, snap! The lights were turned off, and then all of a sudden, they throw them back on and when you were walking into the room, you could kill a conversation. Maybe it’s because they’re done with their conversation, but I was taking it personally." “His guard had gone up over time,” says his closest mentor, Angel Juarbe, the former A&R rep for Equal Vision who discovered the band. Juarbe is now Chiodos’ tour manager; he’s also around to personally remind Owens to stop perusing message boards. As he sees it, when Craig was criticized he became defensive and began to question people’s intentions. "He takes a lot of the criticism. I tell him, ‘The kids suck-they talk shit and you will never please all the people all the time. There is always something they will find to criticize.‘ I tell him he can’t care. It’s your job to make music and play shows. The only person you have to worry about being comfortable is you."
Recently, the music press has been generating shorthand stories of Owens’ struggles with drug and alcohol, and accounts of various self-destructive behaviors. Thanks to a small group of friends, a few mentors and some anti-anxiety pills, Owens has been slowly grabbing control of the world around him.
“I just wish there was that switch where I could be naïve to it all, you know?” Owens says, sighing. “To go into a place with fucking deflectors on and not worry about the whispering. [My] sensitivity to that is just brutal, man.”
Grabbing an acoustic guitar, Owens leans back on the couch in his rented condo located north of Detroit. Though he’s owned the place for two years, it’s hardly furnished. Once when he was on the road, he sent his Aunt Kim money to purchase furniture and kitchenware so he’d have something to come home to besides an empty bed and walls adorned with horror movie posters. She lives a mile down the road from the condo and acts as his “Welcome Wagon” when he returns exhausted from touring. Kim stocks his refrigerator and makes sure the tables have fresh roses or lilies. Things are very different since the days when he played Mr. MacAfee to Bradley Bell’s Conrad Birdie in the Davison High production of Bye, Bye Birdie. “Going to see him now open for Linkin Park,” she says in a separate interview, “it’s a little bit overwhelming to see him up there [onstage].”
Owens points out the few things in the house that he really owns: The guitar, a bed, a few pieces of furniture and five board games. A red 2003 Porsche is parked in the condo garage, Owens’ only looks-like-I-made-it gift to himself. “Trial and error” is listed as Owens’ occupation on his MySpace page. This well-reflects his desire to define himself-more so than a sports car-while trying to shake off the personal self-doubt. Curiously, his self-confidence about his career and the ever-growing number of projects he’s starting [see sidebar] are never in question. Owens is far more competitive than he appears at first glance; it’s that confidence which drives him constantly onto the next project, the next way to get his voice out. Music, as he and Bell describe it, is Owens’ “microphone psychiatry.”
Early in 2005, approximately three months before the release of All’s Well, the Detroit-based band Only In Movies to replace singer Danny Stevens, who left the band to join the Audition, recruited Owens. After a number of delays, Owens took control of the band, and changed the name to Cinematic Sunrise. Joining him and Bell were guitarist Bryan Beeler, long-time friend and Owens’ current housemate Marcus VanKirk on bass, and former Count The Stars drummer (and Chiodos booking agent) Dave Shapiro. Understanding a need for a different context outside of Chiodos to showcase his talents, Owens let pop fans Beeler, VanKirk and Bell lead the way into CinSun’s eventual sunny disposition.
“I personally don’t listen to that much hardcore music anymore,” Bell casually reveals, rattling off Jack’s Mannequin, Rhianna and Justin Timberlake as heavy-rotation faves on his iPod. He refers to CinSun as “light-hearted rock,” a description that will inevitably make some sectors of Chiodos fans cringe. "We are hoping to get away at some point to do the full-length,” Bell continues. “The sound will be similar to [what we’ve done], maybe a little more digital and [with some] happy-sounding rhythms involved. A thing about CinSun that I love is that we really don’t have any deadlines,” he says, laughing.
Though Owens fronts the band, he relishes the fact that it’s not all on him. He considers his role as secondary to the hyper- gregarious Beeler, whose stage banter and impromptu between-song goofing can be as boisterous as Jack Black or as filthy as a classic Blink-182 routine. “I needed that,” Owens readily admits. “I can come out there and just do what I love, sing a style of music I wasn’t familiar with and focus more on my actual vocal cords. I didn’t understand pop music before; I had to grow up and become confident in what I enjoyed about it.”
Critics have agreed, citing Cinematic’s debut EP, A Coloring Storybook And Long Playing Record, as his most confident work yet. The EP-made up of five existing demos and a newer song, “Goodbye Friendship, Hello Heartache”-took 15 months to pull together due to Chiodos’ grueling touring schedule. The closing therapeutic ballad, “You Told Me You Loved Me,” is signature Owens, showcasing a tenor strength that’s usually underused on Chiodos discs.
Artistically and financially speaking, Owens wants to be successful. Given the success of Chiodos, he feels that he’s arrived. Yet he can’t understand why others (particularly bands and fans) would criticize him for his achievements. “It’s just jealousy,” says Warped Tour founder Kevin Lyman, about some bands’ attitudes toward Owens. “Look, some people hate me because I’ve done it my way. People sometimes can’t figure that out about Chiodos-they’ve made their own path and they’re just not going to kiss your ass if you’re the radio guy. It’s just not their style. We seemed to have gotten to a world where [bands] think they’re supposed to be bro-ing down all the time.”
During Chiodos’ AP Party set at the South By Southwest Music Conference earlier this year, Owens and Circa Survive’s Anthony Green cemented their friendship over a cover of the Lemonheads’ “Being Around.” The relationship between the two singers has been riddled with conjecture since their participation in the Rich Balling-helmed “supergroup,” the Sound Of Animals Fighting. (Green appears on the outfit’s upcoming release, The Ocean And The Sun; Owens declined to participate.) If anybody in attendance still thought the singers were harboring any delusions of animosity toward each other, it was clearly erased when Owens and Green stopped in the middle of the song to peck each other on the lips. There’s clearly a deep respect that Green (the better singer) and Owens (the better performer) have that’s nearly spiritual.
Yet, their on-stage personas couldn’t be more different. Watching Anthony Green perform is like watching John Lennon’s “Give Peace A Chance” video, save for the abundance of pillows and Yoko Ono. In Green’s sphere, everyone is in on the experience together. When he jumps into a crowd burying himself among his fans, he proclaims a unity that unabashedly says, I am one with you. But when the hyper-animated, 6-foot-plus Owens launches himself out onto the crowd, he walks upon their outreached hands-carried, but revered-as a gesture of rock-star idolatry that clearly says, You are one with me.
“It really is the fact that I am who they are holding up,” he explains, “When I hear [a crowd] sing along, when I give them the microphone, it’s that combined effort that makes me strong. That’s what gives me my punch on stage. I really feel like I’m leading a pack of people. If I go out onto that stage, I’m going to either fold or shine, and it’s all based upon crowd reaction. Without them, I’m nothing. I stand tallest when I’m with them.”
It’s obvious how much Owens lives for those fans. When he’s on tour, he’s practically on-call for everything, from doing long signing sessions to making cell phone video greetings for fans that couldn’t make it to shows, and commenting via web postings on his own DIY journal website (iamcraigowens.com). While the site succeeds in riveting his fans’ attention, many pay their respect to the singer by frequently infiltrating sites that choose to host any extended threads of Craig-bashing. The memory of being stung by flippant anonymous posters on other sites is something that remains in the back of his mind. “I don’t think these kids realize how many bands they’re breaking up,” he says, shaking his head. “I have been with so many bands on tours. The Early November would read message boards, and it would be one of the main things they’d talk about. The negativity that surrounds a band online… A member will read it and lose all the confidence they had-which could be just barely any-and you just ruined some band for some other kid. You never know if you’ll end up being that one person that will end up doing it.” He leans forward from the couch, grabs his laptop and signs onto the internet to read part of an online journal post thanking his fans, the group he knows will always have his back: “Whether all of your realize it or not, you are all the reason (my sun) rises, and then continues to shine bright in the empty sky each and every day." Closing his laptop, he leans back on the couch. "I’m not a savior,” he says before picking up the guitar again to strum out a few chords. “But I do care so much about them.”
As much as he wants to be a rock star, Craig Owens will probably always reject what it takes to be one. The larger-than-life Owens you see onstage simply can’t overpower the sincerity of the private one. Lately, he’s taken to performing acoustic sets for small private parties around Michigan, bringing down his guard, revealing a personal (as well as unshaven and bespectacled) side to him only the closest people in his circle have seen. It’s simple: Owens arrives and performs like if he was in the third slot of an open-mike night than someone who’s sold close to 400,000 records.
“I may have a tough facade but it’s just self-defense, really,” he resigns. “I’m just a good Midwestern kid, no matter how intelligent and bad-ass a rock star you want to push me off to be. “There’s a chorus in one of the acoustic songs I plan on releasing at some point,” he adds. “It goes, ‘and I know I’m not perfect/but at least I’m honest/and I’ll try to be better for anyone that listens.’"
