Had Durango City Council member and local real estate agent Chris Bettin’s childhood guitar instructor had his way, the young Bettin would have never learned guitar.
He had been taking guitar lessons at a music store in the Southglenn Mall in Littleton when he overheard what should have been a confidential exchange between instructor and parent; Bettin turned financial advice into defiant inspiration.
“My guitar instructor eventually told my mom through the thin walls of the guitar studio that I would never learn to play guitar and she should save her money,” Bettin said. “That was the auspicious beginning of me as a musician. I could have quit there, I probably should have, but I kept going, and it kind of inspired me a little bit; when somebody tells you you can’t do something.”
Bettin has not gone onto being a professional, or even semiprofessional musician; he doesn’t even really play out. But he has been constantly writing songs, enough to release a record in 2014 with local country musician Tyller Gummersall as The Wrecking Balls, and his 2018 solo release where he’s backed by a hot band, which also includes Gummersall, recorded as Robert Kent Voss (the name on his birth certificate as Bettin is adopted) called “Life of Crime.”
Bettin’s sound lies somewhere between the alternative country of Lucero, and the folk-noir of Son Volt or Calexico. Reared on ’80s rock and musical flavors of the month, it was seeing Bruce Springsteen live and listening to the Boss’ 1982 release “Nebraska” that served as a life-changing experience.
“I got drug to a Springsteen concert, and it was that moment in your life where it just blew my mind. Anybody that has been to his concert has that experience because it’s unparalleled,” he said. “I had heard ‘Born In The U.S.A.’ because that was on pop radio, but then I heard ‘Nebraska,’ and I’m still trying to this day to write anything that’s relevant to that album.”
While Springsteen provides the inspiration, it’s Gummersall who has provided the motivation. The pair bonded over roots and rough-around-the-edges folk music, resulting in the “Wrecking Balls” record. While that was being recorded, Bettin continued to write with aspirations to make a solo record, which never took off until Gummersall started to nudge.
“He reached out to me and asked, ‘How’s that album coming?’ and it really wasn’t,” Bettin said. “And he said, ‘Why don’t you let me do it?’ I had not really thought about it, I didn’t want to bother him with it, and he said, ‘I’ll call you back in a week.’ He called me back and said, ‘I’ve got a band, I’ve got a studio, let’s go put this together.’ So he drove the process of making this happen and was passionate about it. So I went along for the ride, again.”
The two remain an industrious pair. Gummersall continues to push Bettin’s productivity, serving not only as his lead guitar player but producer as well. They’ve continued to use Welcome to 1979 studios in Nashville, which is where they laid down Bettin’s next Robert Kent Voss release – “Time Machine” will drop later this month.
Bettin admits that at this point in his life music is more of a hobby than it is a profession. While he likely won’t quit his day job, pile into a van and go on tour, he will continue to view music as a personal exploration of self. Both a music maker and music fan, he’s stoked on the process of putting words to music, documenting the process and releasing it to the world.
“Whether you’re a passionate fan or trying to be a musician, I think it becomes an exploration, intellectually speaking,” he said. “Maybe that’s too much, but I think you start to really try to understand where the poetry of it comes from, and there’s a poetry to the music side as well as the lyrics side and putting those two things together still excites me quite a bit.”
Bryant Liggett is a freelance writer and KDUR station manager. Reach him at liggett_b@fortlewis.edu.
