Twenty Years and Six Strings

As this reaches your virtual mailbox, I’ll have just celebrated my 33^rd year around the sun. So many of the old adages and clichés have continued to hold true: time does fly (especially when one is having fun), life indeed happens when one is busy making other plans, what doesn’t kill you usually makes you stronger, etc., etc. I consider myself to be a person that lives in the present so I try not to dwell in the past and I try not to worry too much about potential future timelines. Still, celebrations like this often prompt me to take a moment of reflection as I look back on the things that brought me to today. One of those moments led to the realization that I’ve just reached a major landmark in my career. This January marked my 20^th anniversary of picking up the guitar. 

When I first started playing guitar, it was at an interesting time in my life. The year was 2003 and I was in the 7^th grade. Like many others, my parents always encouraged me to engage in a few extracurricular activities. I’d found myself drawn to martial arts early on as I was obsessed with the Power Rangers as a child. I pestered my parents for years to let me give it a try and they eventually enrolled me at the Okinawa Kenpo Karate Academy when I was 7 years old. Karate came to me fairly naturally and quickly developed into my first real passion. I progressed through the ranks for a few years and eventually earned my second degree black belt through my school and also through the International Karate Kobudo Federation (the I.K.K.F., for short), a feat that I was immensely proud of. Though a large portion of my life revolved around karate, my parents wanted me to be well-rounded and pushed me to pursue an additional activity each semester. The springtime was occupied by track and field, a sport that I enjoyed but lacked any significant skill in. The winter of 2002-2003, however, was notably quieter. I’d quit taking art classes as the lack of hands-on teaching had left me fairly unenthused and I’d given up my basketball hopes and dreams, though I was REALLY good at playing the bench… So, they gave me a choice: I could go back to art lessons or try my hand at picking up an instrument. My first choice was to play drums, a desire that was shut down in an instant. The next instrument that came to mind was the guitar. It had stuck out to me ever since I’d heard the solo in Chicago’s “25 or 6 to 4.” So we drove 10 minutes to Old Towne Music and bought my first guitar, a $100 Johnson acoustic with a blue sunburst finish that still resides with my family in New Jersey. I was immediately hooked. Little did I know how much that moment would alter the entire trajectory of my life. 

I promptly began taking private lessons at Old Towne, first with a young college student named Walt Ribeiro. Walt was a Frank Zappa and Dream Theater enthusiast that put up with a lot during our lessons. He helped me navigate through all of the basics that a beginning guitar player should learn and then often succumbed to teaching me whatever new Linkin Park song I pressured him into teaching me that week. Walt was a smart guy and knew that he had to lead me down a proper path by peppering in a healthy helping of jazz music theory in between the nu-metal tracks. At the time, none of it registered with my young brain until one day when the proverbial “light bulb” went off and everything clicked into place. The hidden world of guitar was revealed to me and my hunger only grew. My martial arts career on the other hand had grown stagnant. My instructor (who was also the owner of the school) essentially told my father and me in a meeting that I’d learned all there was for him to teach me and that he’d want me to move into more of a teaching position moving forward. I was heartbroken. Here I was, a 14-year-old kid, and I was just… done? I’d look over at my guitar and saw something different. This was an object that would continue to grow with me. There’d always be a new song or a new technique to learn. My first passion had burned out and a new one rose in its place almost overnight. 

Not long after this, I got my first electric guitar and it was “all gas, no brakes” from that point on. I joined my high school jazz band in my freshman year despite being woefully ill-equipped for the job outside of a genuine enthusiasm to learn and play that style of music. Those four years afforded me the opportunity to play with other people in a style that was a far cry from the alternative rock riffs I’d sling around at home and it broadened my scope of what was possible with the instrument. I still distinctly remember the day in band class when the thought dawned on me, “You know, I’m actually kind of good at this. Maybe there’s a future here…” High school also led to meeting one of my closest friends in my longtime bandmate, Vini Stamato (who took to spelling “Vinny” that way because of Jimi Hendrix). Our friendship started by jamming Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” in the band room one morning and by the end of high school we were collaborating on original music, a first for me. We played in a few different bands through college, some separate and some together, before finally settling into our passion project, In The Presence Of Wolves, the band in which I’m still the principle songwriter. ITPOW introduced me to more of my closest friends (3 of my 5 groomsmen at my wedding were my bandmates) and one particular gig led to a mutual friend bringing along my future wife to see us play. Evidently, she remarked to that friend, “Are any of them single?” and, as fate would have it, I was the only one who was! 

Before we got married, my wife took a job offer here in Georgia at the National Archives and it became obvious that I’d eventually move here myself. We suffered through a long distance relationship for over 3 years while I chased the music dream until I was finally ready to uproot from my Jersey home of 28 years. Like so many other things along the way, the timing was serendipitous and the guitar served as my guiding light. I walked into Maple Street looking for a job and almost immediately became a member of the family. The move was scary for me, I’d suddenly found myself hundreds of miles away from the comfort of all my relatives and close friends. But here I was, welcomed in with open arms as my passion for guitar had once again introduced me to some of my favorite people. 

Over twenty years ago, I picked up an acoustic guitar and didn’t even know that I was supposed to put my fingers *in between* the frets instead of directly on them. In some ways, I admire that youthful ignorance. It makes the rest of the journey seem even more special. Now I’ve spent almost twice as much time as a guitarist than as a non-guitarist. Those twenty years have consisted of countless performances, two albums of original music, a tour in which I got to travel throughout the entire United States (and some of Canada!), a full-time career in a great store working alongside true friends, and the majority of the most meaningful relationships in my life. Through every one of those days I’ve remained grateful that I sucked at basketball…

-Chris Capitanio, May 2023