Chris Devine

Chris learned all that he knows about songwriting and stagecraft from two places: His unreasonably large music collection, especially singer-songwriters like John Gorka, Patty Larkin and Dan Fogelberg; and at the hands of an endless parade of British-folk luminaries who passed through his family's house during his teenage years ... Musicians like Ivan Drever (guitarist and singer for Wolfstone), Martin Carthy, Jez Lowe, Johnny and Phil Cunningham, Andy M. Stewart, Manus Lunny, Old Blind Dogs, the Tannahill Weavers and dozens of others.

Though he's been playing piano and singing since he was a small child, he first picked up a guitar in 1990 to try his hand at songwriting and hasn't stopped since. Practically a native of Arizona, Chris spent five and a half years in the Coast Guard, traveling the country and the world before returning to his homeland. He's performed for audiences in nearly a dozen states (once sharing a stage with a pre-fame Jewel Kilcher), a handful of countries and on the deck of a tall ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Along the way, he picked up some other instruments, such as percussion, mandolin, tin whistle, Irish bouzouki and more, and found that he could cause them to make pleasing noises, too. But only the percussion and Irish bouzouki (and, of course, guitar, keyboards and his voice) join him on stage with any regularity.

In addition to his sensitive singer-songwriter personality, which can occasionally be seen on display at intimate private gatherings, Chris has an alter-ego named Neon. Said doppelganger can sometimes be seen working his synthesizer and computer like a mad scientist in search of earth-shattering electronic sounds. This evil twin is also occasionally responsible for incredibly over-the-top remixes of Hadrian's Wall and Haiku Rd. songs, and has recorded two bizarre synth-drenched instrumentals.

Always reluctant to toot his own horn (so to speak), Chris must be threatened with bodily injury to reveal that he has a bachelor's degree (cum laude) in journalism and a master's in library science. Not that it makes a difference. It's just there.