The Official Website of Chris Jones, singer

And if you are a performer, you need to read this...

With numb faces, red eyes, and sore cheekbones, we have just returned from Joan Rivers' tour-de-force performance at the Music Center at Strathmore, in North Bethesda, MD. She is one of the funniest people in the world to me. There is a shortlist of maybe four comedians, living or dead, who can make me laugh at any time of the day no matter how I am feeling. Margaret Cho, Ellen DeGeneres, Joan Rivers, and - more recently - Chelsea Handler. While they all have markedly different comedic styles, I have noticed some common threads in their work; threads that I can personally identify with in a very strong way.

The first is an intrinsic sense of somehow being the outsider in life - the underdog - with overarching themes and experiences in your daily round that constantly whisper into your ear telling you that, at least metaphorically speaking, you are definitely NOT sitting at the "cool table." And try as you might to fit in so you'll be accepted, the fashionable, popular people are always going to be rolling their eyes at you.

The second common thread I have noticed is their absolute love of being onstage, and the love of the craft of their work. These are people who are doing what they do - at the highest levels possible - and they would be doing it whether before five people in a community center in Duluth, or before 4,000 people at a sold out performance in one of the wealthiest theater communities in the United States, as Joan Rivers did tonight. They are out there doing it because they LOVE it.

But the most important part of this equation, for me, is that they were all doing it before they had success and before they had money. My learning curve right now, which seems to be curving around the following - to do what I love to do (singing and sharing music) without the foundational, stabilizing things that fame provides (total personal financial security, an agent, a manager, a TOUR manager, a publicist, having a name that guarantees a paying audience, etc., etc.) - is actually very, very, very difficult.

Today I took a walk in the Bishop's Garden at the Washington National Cathedral. The weather was so lovely!

A couple of months have gone by, and I am about to raise the bar once more on my singing videos. I just finished a project with my arranger and accompanist - a cover of Lady Gaga's "The Edge of Glory." It is arranged with full harmony. This video represents the first step in increasing the complexity and quality of my singing videos.

This fall, I will be recording real music videos. Stay tuned for a couple of live performances and for the music videos to the traditional Appalachian song, "Wayfaring Stranger" and to the Irish folk tune titled "The Fields of Athenry."

Enjoy! ~ C

On January 20, 2009, I sang for President Obama's Inauguration Day Prayer Service at St. John's Church, Lafayette Square, in Washington, D.C. That was truly one of the most thrilling experiences of my life. There was so much anticipation and excitement in the church that day. There were buzzing waves of electricity in the air. I could feel the energy and attention of the entire world focusing on this one person, the President-elect, sitting only twenty yards from me. It was overwhelming.

One of the pieces we sang that morning was "Hope, Faith, Life, Love" from the cycle Three Songs of Faith by composer Eric Whitacre. I loved performing the piece, and I was shocked that I had never heard of this composer before. With all the professional choral singing that I do, how had I never sung this gorgeous music? The piece is dense; thick and heavy with hypnotic beauty. There are suspensions everywhere, which I love, and being in the middle of the sound his music creates makes you feel grounded and satisfied in a way that is difficult to describe.