Liam Christy. Photograph by Kevin A. Roberts
Lliam Christy is in his fifth decade as a musician, having started as a 17-year-old sideman in 1979 with Billy James and The Flames.
“It was the first time I ever recorded,” he remembers. “We might’ve cut two tracks.” From there, he moved on to Marlon Monroe, a short-lived but popular rock act that in 1982 recorded a two-song EP, one that he hopes to re-release in the near future.
But since 2001, Christy has dedicated himself to flamenco. Through luck, connections, and some serious chops, he’s emerged as a player of real skill, with students flocking to his South City home for lessons. He’s known throughout U.S., and when he tours, he sprinkles in international dates.
A fan of genre-blending sounds, Christy embarked on an ambitious project in 2015, re-imagining the classic soft-rock track “Summer Breeze” with an entirely new skin. (The idea came to him when he was in Colorado, “playing low-key gigs at wine bars.”) Christy wonders, having seen Seals & Crofts as a kid, whether the cut was hardwired into his brain. What he did with it in the version that he recorded with one-off supergroup Barbary Saints is entirely different than the original.
“It’s a remake in a hip-hop fusion style,” Christy says. “It’s one of those songs that’s timeless. It’s a soft-rock song that, if you listen, the lyrics are about nothing—but it’s also about everything.”
Christy turned to singer-rappers Mathias James and Candace Wilbert of Mathias & The Pirates. The track grew, with contributions recorded all across the country, then wound up in the hands of Lazaro Galarraga, a highly regarded Afro-Cuban vocalist with whom Christy had worked while living in L.A. Galarraga’s additions wound up taking the track in an entirely new direction; the already-morphed version now contained a long coda, featuring several Cuban son musicians, including the acclaimed bassist Yelsy Heredia, who ran with the cut and, to Christy, “gave it a real Cuban credibility and authenticity. The idea of the Cuban part came at the last second. In Lazaro’s case, what he’s singing is a call to the god who controls the wind, the breeze. He immediately understood what it was about. “To me, that was magical,” Christy says, noting that it stretched the cut to five minutes.
L.A. percussionist Bobby Wilmore and a group of St. Louis all-stars—drummer Grover Stewart and horn players Kasimu Taylor and John Covelli—further supplemented the track. All of the players were attracted to the project not so much for a paycheck but instead for the chance to participate in what Christy says is a “feel-good mash-up” with a “really dense mix” featuring guitar parts in a host of moods, from flamenco to blues to “strummy-strummy pop.”
Christy admits that the project “seems kind of random” but says, “I get a lot of ideas for songs, for remakes. It’s got a nice vibe.” His desire to work with the hip-hop talents of Wilbert and James caused the project to shift, shimmy, and eventually become one of the city’s most intriguing tracks in some time, a song that Christy feels “is something unique—and something unique to St. Louis.”
"Summer Breeze” is available on SoundCloud and CD Baby.
Musical Miles
Christy’s added several notable acts to his musical resume over the years. Among them:
Big Fun: This “left of the dial” cover band was a major force during Mississippi Nights’ heyday.
The Stranded Lads: Vocalist Andrew John so impressed Christy when he opened for Big Fun that Christy eventually joined John’s highly hummable pop band.
Pale Divine: When Richard Fortus left to join the Psychedelic Furs, Christy stepped into those very big shoes and later formed the short-lived Rainbox with other members of Pale Divine.
