RhVibe, 23,(otherwise known as Chris Downing), born and raised in Plymouth, has recently caught the attention of PSU with his melodic performances at the Lucky Dog Tavern and Grill and at Open Mic Nights in the HUB.
Downing has been an aspiring musician for nine years and released his debut EP entitled “Waiting Around” on October 4 of this year. The album was recorded at Mojo Records of Franconina.
His debut album is a personal story about the end of his first long-term relationship, and the realization that he had gotten it all wrong. The songs on the album also break some rules as they aren’t arranged or spread out according to sound and key, but how they occur on the CD is the order that they happened within Downing’s “story”.
“I started playing music for a lack of better things to do and it turned out to be an alternative means for keeping myself out of trouble. It is also an outlet for expression…especially for what I had been dealing with at the time,” says Downing.
According to Downing, this first album shows his darker side. ” Thank You” is the most angry song on the CD, but at the same time it’s saying “Thank you for doing this to me. It also opened my eyes to a bunch of things that I wasn’t aware of at the time.”
Once he had enough songs that he felt comfortable recording, however, releasing the CD ended up being close to a three-year process that required careful planning, negotiation, and a disposable income.
He also wanted a full band recorded on the EP, but lacked the band members to do it. Luckily, he had been working with Tony Cimino, the music engineer at Mojo Music Studio and accomplished session drummer who agreed to lend a hand with the eight tracks of “Waiting Around”. Downing went back later to overlay bass and extra guitar tracks to his songs.
“He [Cimino] learned the songs as best as he could, we ran through the songs a couple of times, and it was instant how quickly we started to play together. We did three ten hour days of recording… it was pretty intense,” adds Downing.
Producing “Waiting Around” was fairly cost effective. The studio time was affordable as the studio felt it was a part of this project. His friend Scott Jehl did the photography and Downing edited the photos himself. So far, the CD has been well received locally.
However, “Waiting Around” isn’t selling as quickly nationally as Downing would like. He admits that being a musician and a full time student (at Plymouth State) is difficult. He doesn’t have much time to promote himself and also feels that: ” It’s hard in this digital age to get anyone to pay for music…a lot of people don’t understand the need until they meet and know an artist that is trying to make a little money, or just make his money back”.
“Waiting Around” has recently been accepted into iTunes and may be purchased for $0.99 cents per track. The CD is also available on (www.earbuzz.com, www.cdbaby.com and www.awarestore.com ) RhVibe is also on Myspace, check Downing out here: [www.myspace.com/rhvibe]or his website ( www.rhvibemusic.com)Or add him to facebook