INTERVIEW: Chris Cronin’s Spontaneous Local Music Odyssey
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“A lot of times, I don't know what a song or sound will be until I'm actually in the process of making it. Other times, it’s pretty well thought out…but even within that, there's going to be elements that are just completely spontaneous.”
Chris Cronin’s journey through local music started young, as I suppose it does for most of us who feel the urge to create. It’s a part of our identity that forms during our earliest exposure to songs, and for Cronin it began as an answer to the age-old question we all find ourselves being asked at around 13: ‘What do you want to do for a living?’
“I wanted to find a way to have a job that I really enjoyed,” he told me as we sipped on coffee at Rock Hill Bakehouse in Glens Falls. In childhood, he’d come to notice that many people around him were not working their ideal, dream jobs and he found it kind of sad. For him, it began as a quest to find the most fulfilling way to make money.
“I was thinking of what career I would like to pursue, and music was always interesting but I didn't know what instrument I wanted to play.” And then he saw it: School of Rock, the age old story of the perseverance of the spirit of rock and roll. He told me that seeing that film as a 13-year-old who had just come around to the idea of performing music was a transformative experience that opened up a whole new world of possibilities.
“I got the chills all over my body when that final guitar solo came in, so I chose to play guitar. From then on, I just taught myself how to play, listening to a lot of Jack White and trying to emulate what he was doing. I learned power chords. Eventually I met Mikey Merced, who, believe it or not, was only 12 years old at the time. He wrote some pretty interesting songs, nothing like anything I'd ever heard before; he's one of the best songwriters that I know.”
He and Merced would form the Queensbury-based group Carry The Tradition along with a pre-Candy Ambulance rhythm section of Jesse Bolduc on bass and Jon Cantiello on the drums. Together, the quartet would put out several demos and a couple of albums of material between 2008 and 2011 but would go their separate ways after a few years together following Merced’s relocation to Los Angeles. Cronin, Bolduc, and Cantiello formed a short-lived trio called The Basic Brothers, but ultimately Bolduc and Cantiello would go on to form Candy Ambulance with Caitlin Barker (another story for another time). “We did CTT throughout high school, and eventually things didn't work out with that,” he reminisced. “A few years later, I joined Leonard.”
For Cronin, the invitation to join Let’s Be Leonard came at just the right time. Despite being a guitarist by trade, they asked him if he would consider joining the band on bass. He accepted the invitation. “I needed that in my life,” he explained. “At the time, I didn't really have anything going on anymore. That took me riding a school bus around the country.” You heard that right: from 2015 through 2018, Let’s Be Leonard traveled around the greater 518 and beyond via a repurposed school bus to deliver great times and great jams for all who were in their orbit.
Let’s Be Leonard circa 2016
“Every day was a fun story,” he told me. “I remember going out there with my girlfriend at the time, having a harmonica that I would just pick up once in a while and play. We all slept on these bunk beds pretty much right next to each other, and went into Walmart every morning to brush our teeth.”
That part sounded like something right out of a teen comedy, as he described walking through the superstore in pajama pants with long, messy hair shuffling towards the sink in the men’s room. But in contrast, he also recalled some electric performances in places like California and Appleton, Wisconsin. The relationships gained from their adventures were the kind that stand the test of time. “The guys and I are still friends to this day, good friends in fact. It was a lot of fun. It's good to have those relationships endure, even when things don't work out.”
Though Let’s Be Leonard’s semi-official end was announced on social media in 2022, their last release hit Bandcamp in 2018. Cronin began putting out his own solo music as the band started to wind down, releasing Backwards and A Painting From Under This Tree in 2020. He would follow those up with Forwards in 2021, and most recently, Time & Price last December. Incorporating elements of electronic music along with acoustic singer-songwriter roots, his sound brings indie experimentation into contact with americana and folk music as well as incorporating elements of pop rock.
“As far as genre goes, what I listen to doesn't fit in a specific mold,” he told me. He laid out the trajectory of his own influences for me, starting with an almost unconscious emulation of blink-182 that became mixed in with an affinity for Bob Dylan, an interest in what Coldplay was all about, and an inclination toward Radiohead. All of that would eventually merge with a love for the Grateful Dead. He said that whether it’s what he listens to or what he’s writing, the music remains fluid. “As far as my playing and singing goes, whether it's acoustic, bluegrass, older, newer, more energetic… to me it's not much of a difference,” he explained. “You just progress your playing and your taste as time goes on.”
That fluidity manifests itself in Cronin’s creative process. “It's going with the flow completely,” he told me. “A lot of times, I don't know what a song or sound will be until I'm actually in the process of making it. Other times, it’s pretty well thought out like how an architect has a blueprint; but even within that, there's going to be elements that are just completely spontaneous.” He said that especially when he’s utilizing electronic music, he doesn’t always know what’s going to happen in the moment of a performance or a recording session. Sometimes, he’ll stumble upon something random and then find a way to work it in.
It’s that very spontaneity that has led Cronin on one of the more interesting journeys in local music. For the last 17 years, it’s taken him from coast to coast and drifting through genres almost like he’s hitchhiking on the songs themselves. His path serves as a reminder of what can happen when you surrender to your dreams, and simply go where they take you.
Find Chris Cronin’s music on bandcamp!
