Tony Scott: 0:21

Welcome to The Jay Franze Show, a behind-the-curtain look at the entertainment industry, with insights you can't pay for and stories you've never heard. Now here's your host, Jay Franze.

Jay Franze: 0:49

And we are coming at you live. I am Jay Franzee and with me tonight the bunny to my Clyde, my beautiful co-host, Miss Tiffany Mason.

Tiffany Mason: 0:58

I thought I was going to be the bunny to your jelly roll.

Jay Franze: 1:03

That would probably work better. If you are new to the show, this is your source for the latest news, reviews and interviews, so if you'd like to join in, comment or fire off any questions, please head over to jayfranze. com. All right, folks, tonight we have a very special guest. We have a country music recording artist, and then some Hailing from not the great state, but hailing from London. We have Chris Erasmus. Chris, sir, thank you for joining us.

Chris Erasmus: 1:32

Thanks for having me, Jay, nice to meet you and Tiff.

Jay Franze: 1:35

It is our pleasure to have you here Right out of the gate. I just have to know what is going on in the music scene in London these days.

Chris Erasmus: 1:43

London music scene is always an interesting one. A lot of country artists coming through. Actually, at the moment A couple of the up-and-comers coming through. We've always got Country to Country, which is getting bigger and bigger every year. It sells out the O2 in a matter of days, so a lot of good things happening. We've got Camden. It's like our little Nashville. There's always something good brewing over there and a lot of talent coming out of there all the time, so it's always a good place to find a good gig, good music and a huge variety of music up here actually, so it keeps you on your toes. Not as much country as I would like, but we're working on it.

Jay Franze: 2:14

But it's well-received.

Chris Erasmus: 2:16

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the good stuff's well received. They love the American recording artists that come over. You know, yolani Wilson's, stapleton's, luke Combs came through, sold out the O2, I think, three nights straight. So yeah, there's a huge, huge reception here for good country.

Tiffany Mason: 2:33

What is the O2?

Chris Erasmus: 2:36

The O2 is like our big venue essentially our arena venue that it's the big step up in London. The O2 is like our big venue essentially our arena venue. It's the big step up in London. If you want to sell out a place, that's the place to do it Madison Square Garden, the equivalent.

Tiffany Mason: 2:48

Got it.

Jay Franze: 2:49

Yeah, so I want to get deep into your time in London and the scene and all. But how did you get from Africa to London in the first place?

Chris Erasmus: 2:59

Oh man, that's a journey. I actually I'm a country boy, so I grew up in a place called Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, which is actually in a game reserve, so it's a natural reservation area. We did a lot of conservation of wildlife and then, when Zimbabwe got a little tricky to live in with the political situation, we moved down to South Africa Still got a farm tricky to live in. With the political situation, we moved down to South Africa uh, still got a farm down there, and it was kind of a progression. Where I was working in, I actually went over to Australia to study. Before that I was in in Montana.

Chris Erasmus: 3:29

I did a season as a cowboy up up in Montana, which is pretty cool, uh, up by Red Lodge and, um, I got invited over to the States to actually, so I was in America before I was in London. I got invited over to the states to actually, so I was in america before I was in london. I got invited over to the states and I was. I was uh, studying, studying music and acting over there and kind of. Then I've got an irish passport, so so once my time in the states kind of came to an end, I I kind of naturally came across the the pond and ended up in london, and I've been hustling away here ever since all right, you mentioned aust Australia you said studying in Australia.

Jay Franze: 4:02

What did you study and where did you study it at?

Chris Erasmus: 4:05

Well, I studied two things in Australia. I studied in Queensland, the University of Queensland, that's in Brisbane, yeah, on the Gold Coast, mike, a lot of good science over there and I was there kind of doing athletics, decathlon and studying marketing and business as well as tourism. And then I did a master's degree in business. Whilst I was doing that, I was studying music and acting kind of alongside it, because they wouldn't let me stay there and just do that, so I had to kind of diversify a little bit.

Jay Franze: 4:37

I laugh because I graduated from their business school with a master's in business.

Chris Erasmus: 4:42

Oh cool, so we would have been in the same, in the same bottle of water.

Jay Franze: 4:44

Possibly.

Chris Erasmus: 4:46

You're probably a bit more efficient than me. It's a long climb.

Jay Franze: 4:49

But it was a great school. I loved every bit of it.

Chris Erasmus: 4:52

Yeah, they're on top of their stuff over there. Yeah, it's a great school.

Jay Franze: 4:54

So you go there. And then you said you went to Montana but you were invited.

Chris Erasmus: 5:02

I actually went up to Montana. My family went on holiday to the States and my mom's a horse master, so we grew up on horses on the farm, working animals, and we found ourselves just ended up on a dude ranch. I say dude ranch, they were a working ranch that every now and again voted some people that they got to pay to do the manual labor, until you got invited to do it for free. So initially we were actually there as guests and they kind of realized that we were riding ringer on the cowboys because we grew up on horses. And one of the bosses jokingly was like hey, you know, if you wanted a job, if you can just come over here. And I was like, well, I'm not doing anything for the next six months. And they were like cool, so I went, went back, sorted out stuff in Australia and went and worked the season over there.

Tiffany Mason: 5:46

Yeah, wow, that's amazing yeah, it was cool.

Chris Erasmus: 5:49

I mean, who doesn't want to be a cowboy, right?

Tiffany Mason: 5:51

right? Well, it gives you a lot more um credibility now with your country music, right? Yeah, look I agree, I think.

Chris Erasmus: 5:58

I think there's a lot of credibility. I still didn't really sing that much about my truck getting stuck in the mud, because I did have a truck in London and it did get stuck in the mud but it's hard to have a truck in London. Find that my music kind of really walks the line between very much country and then kind of Indamericana, your folk kind of world sometimes, and sometimes people be, because at my other job I do a lot of musical theater. Sometimes they tell me that it sounds like it's in a musical theater show, which means I usually have to add a bit more, a bit more steel string in there. That's funny.

Jay Franze: 6:37

You mentioned going into London and not being able to have a truck, so I want to know how it fits into London. But why aren't you able to have a truck in London?

Tiffany Mason: 6:49

Like New York City.

Chris Erasmus: 6:50

Yeah, essentially, but they charge you tax for different vehicles and stuff here. So if you're living in the city, charge a tax and you're trying to find a place to park it, it can get tricky. Unfortunately, our trucks aren't quite the size of your trucks. We drive something a little bit slightly smaller with the fuel prices over here. But yeah, I had a truck for a bit and eventually just had to let it kind of pass on. It was just too much of a nightmare trying to find parking for it everywhere I went.

Tiffany Mason: 7:18

How do you bring your guitar with you everywhere, then?

Chris Erasmus: 7:21

Yeah, I tie it on the roof.

Tiffany Mason: 7:22

I've got a little suit. Don't say that I just put everything in.

Jay Franze: 7:28

You play a Taylor right.

Chris Erasmus: 7:31

No, I play something called an Atkin, which is a British maids guitar company. They're really really good at what they do. They make a very good version of some very similar to the J45, which you would get in the Gibson range. Because they don't make it at kind of as big a scale, you can be a bit more sure that you get one, that the wood sits just right. The sound's kind of in a good place.

Jay Franze: 7:52

Until you strap it to the roof of your car.

Chris Erasmus: 7:55

Yeah, well, that's got to add a little bit of age to it too.

Jay Franze: 8:00

That don't quite sound right so you take this interest in music and now you've travelled around the world, experienced a few different countries you end up in London. Now you're starting to put songs together. At what point did you decide you wanted to take a run at this?

Chris Erasmus: 8:17

well, I was always a singer.

Chris Erasmus: 8:18

So I used to I mean, I still do sing for my supper. You know whether it's the kind of classics and cabaret you know sinatra bube I grew up watching, you know gene kelly, fred astaire, all those classics. We didn't have direct link television on the farm so my grandma had all the vcr tapes of like fred astaire and gene kelly, errol flynn, you know robin hood and all that stuff, john Wayne, and then obviously the records that they had were of kind of your Hank Williams, johnny Cash, louis Armstrong, springsteen, you know. So it was like it was a huge kind of race Storytellers, huge range of music.

Chris Erasmus: 8:57

You had guys who could really sing. You had guys who didn't need to sing because they were such good storytellers not that they couldn't, but but you know you like your bruce springsteen's and your cashers, they've got beautiful voice but they're not having to riff to get a point across, right. So I find that that really interesting and and and really kind of picked. That really started it. So I was always singing those kind of songs and then one day like well, why don't you write your own stuff? You know you could record it and I had a run at it and wasn't entirely sure about it. I think imposter syndrome is a real thing. I think it doesn't matter who you ask.

Chris Erasmus: 9:32

And then I kind of tracked these songs, put them away and then even did some covers, tracked some covers actually in Cape Town. A friend of mine he actually reminded me of this a while back and he said you know that, uh, darius rocker, when he, when he did wagon wheel, he did it like in a different tempo. We tracked that same song in a four, four tempo about three years before he did listen. His version is amazing, don't even run, but it just. It gave me the confidence to be like oh, you're actually not, you're not, you're not a complete idiot. You're seeing things and you're telling stories and your ear is hearing things and you can trust it and kind of. I went with that and recorded a bit. We had a cover in New York when I was in New York, not necessarily country, but it went into the Billboard charts, which is pretty cool. First single, which was nice, right, I was like this is easy cool first single, which was nice right.

Tiffany Mason: 10:25

Um, yeah, I was like this is easy, uh, but it had to have given you a little bit more of that. Um, you know, like you were saying I'm not saying you're an idiot, but you were saying you know, like I'm not an idiot, yeah, I had to give you just that much more reassurance and your self-confidence yeah, I think that's a huge thing, I think, for any artist.

Chris Erasmus: 10:40

and, and even now, like I'm busy writing an album at the moment, and the amount of times you run into a brick wall and you're going, I don't know what I'm doing, I'm using the same chords, everything's boring. You know the same stuff that we throw at each other all the time. These lyrics suck.

Chris Erasmus: 10:53

But yeah, I also was really lucky that you know, I am a working actor and I was studying an extravagant woman called Susan Batson in New York and she was really interesting because she always focused on telling, just telling the stories like service, the material, and I didn't just apply that to like scripts, I applied that to music and songs and that's kind of why I found that guys like Bruce Springsteen, johnny Cash's got a vehicle for events which you guys might know of. They're such genuine storytellers. So that, for me, was the like thing that I kind of grabbed onto and really wanted to put into my music when I did do it do you think Johnny Cash being one of your influences, is why your music has a little bit of that Americana feel to it?

Chris Erasmus: 11:34

yeah, the Cash stuff also. I love Stapleton. I think he's, he's pretty special and also I, you know you tell stories that you know I didn't set out to actually do country music.

Tiffany Mason: 11:43

I wrote music and everyone was like oh, this is country oh right, because your truck got stuck in the mud, right, exactly funny enough, that wasn't the one that.

Chris Erasmus: 11:54

That was not one we recorded, but yeah, so it came from. It was almost like it came from the other side, where I wrote what I knew. And what I knew was country. Not necessarily an American cowboy, but you know, I was a cowboy. I've worked horses, worked cattle all over the world. One stage I heard a buffalo on horseback. That was one of the stupid things I've done in my life. You know African buffalo, that was wild. They were doing a photo shoot and they had us riding. How none of us died is a miracle. But you know, you tell those stories and then and essentially, country is, is country?

Chris Erasmus: 12:31

So many different things can be country, which is what I think, what makes it such a magical genre and sometimes what makes people argue about what is country and what isn't, as you've kind of seen in the last kind of year. Yeah, everyone's got something to say about country or something to you know relates to it and at its core, I think you know relates to it and at its core I think you know the genius that started. You know you've got your really kind of bluesy guys. You know the Johnsons and you know it's just. You know I love everything that kind of comes together and kind of combines with what we end up calling country or Americana or you know wherever my music kind of fits too. But I find you know that you look at the line of rock and roll and how many bruce springsteen songs could you be like? Is that country? Or you know, you know how many stapleton songs could be rock oh, absolutely yeah, so I love it.

Chris Erasmus: 13:22

I love it and and I kind of focus on telling the music, trying to make sure it's good quality and I let everyone else decide where it lands, what genre it is.

Jay Franze: 13:33

Well, I'll tell you, I spent decades living in Nashville and I'm the furthest thing in the world from a cowboy, so I don't think location really matters.

Chris Erasmus: 13:43

Yeah, I mean, listen, I agree with you. I think what kind of cowboy makes is also a difference. I mean, there's some cowboys out there that'll kick my ass, that's for sure. But including my friends who I work with, and they keep me pretty straight. If I release a song before I'm writing a song and I'm like, hey, is this too cheesy, I'll send it to them and they're literally busy branding cattle or something They'll call me up and be like yeah you can't say that, or all right, cool, I'm gonna wear another one back.

Tiffany Mason: 14:10

Uh, so I do have a sony board.

Chris Erasmus: 14:11

I was gonna say, at least they've got your back. Oh, they do, and they'll, and they'll give it to me. They'll be like, yeah, that hat in that photo shoot was terrible. And I'm like, yeah, but it was the hat I work with. And they're like, we know, but you need, you need to just get just here. And then they sent me off to, like when I was in montana, off to, to, to kind of one of the hat shops.

Jay Franze: 14:26

Well, you're wearing hats for a purpose. They're wearing hats for a photo shoot.

Chris Erasmus: 14:31

I've got my hats now, so I've got a couple of good hats.

Jay Franze: 14:33

You've got your photo shoot, hats.

Chris Erasmus: 14:36

Well, I work in them as well, so they kind of just do both.

Jay Franze: 14:39

Nice. Like I said, I've lived there for decades and I've worked with all the people in the music industry and none of them are actual cowboys. It's in the music industry and none of them are actual cowboys.

Chris Erasmus: 14:50

You know, it's just a different lifestyle. That's all it is. It is. Being a cowboy is tough man. There's some, there's some.

Jay Franze: 14:53

They're really tough yeah, I can't even imagine. Nope, not my thing at all especially when it's like freezing cold.

Chris Erasmus: 15:00

In montana that's when I went home. They were like, hey, do you guys want to stay? It was like snowing outside. I'm like, yeah, I'm good, I'm time to go.

Tiffany Mason: 15:06

I'm an.

Chris Erasmus: 15:07

African cowboy. This is not.

Tiffany Mason: 15:09

London is calling Nice.

Jay Franze: 15:14

I don't want to go too far off on a tangent, but you mentioned musical theater and you mentioned dance and all this stuff. How do you apply that knowledge and that experience into your music?

Chris Erasmus: 15:25

I think, a understanding what a song is saying. A lot of singers will stand up on stage and try to be like I've got to show people I can sing, or I've got to show people how good I am, but what a lot of the musical theatre people that I really like working with and look up to, or the dancing. It's not about showing how good you are. It's about telling the story and finding that essence of storytelling within the music. Showing how good you are. It's about telling the story and finding that's that essence of storytelling within, within the music. You know, somebody like Sondheim will, will actually the music will tell you exactly what he's feeling and then the words will back that up.

Chris Erasmus: 15:59

And and that's quite a cool thing to play with as a, as a songwriter, and you're standing on the back of people who can really really, you know, tell, tell stories and have throughout the years in such a major range of genres. I mean you get country versions of country musical theatre, you get pop, rock, classical. It also taught me to sing a lot of different ways. So I'm not locked into, like I can only do this. I'm like, oh, that sounds cool, let's try it. It might sound terrible, but let's try it. And the other thing I get to do is because I'm auditioning and I'm getting to perform in front of people a lot in a lot of different ways. It helps me be less nervous I wouldn't say it stops me being nervous but in front of people performing a lot more, there's less time between gigs, so to speak.

Jay Franze: 16:44

Right Well, the nerves go away with experience, the more experience you have, and you in multiple, not only genres of music but dance and different types of entertainment. That's things that most people can't do. So that's got to give you a little bit of confidence, which will take away some of those nerves.

Chris Erasmus: 17:04

Well, and constantly being thrown out of your comfort zone in a lot of ways, not just musical theater, screen stuff that I've done too. If you're running around pretending you're a beach ball, it'll put you out of your comfort zone.

Tiffany Mason: 17:17

Well, I have to assume too that because of the different paths you've walked in life, it's made you a little bit more authentic, and the fact that you appreciate the storytelling. I have to assume that when you get on the stage you're just authentically being yourself and people relate to authenticity. We're all just looking for real people, not fake surface level.

Chris Erasmus: 17:40

Yeah, I mean, I think there's different levels of that and different ways people present that, which I've seen. And yeah, I I just try kind of let everyone be who they they feel they need to be and and really just focus on trying to tell the stories that I'm maybe lucky enough people want to hear you know and hope that the rest takes care of itself, although my manager will keep telling me to post more on Instagram. That's weird.

Jay Franze: 18:11

That's not the first time we've heard that huh Jay. I'm sure that one's come up. Yeah, so can you tell us about your writing process?

Chris Erasmus: 18:18

Yeah, sure, a lot of this stuff comes from. I'll sit down and I approach it in two ways. Sometimes I've just got an earworm or I hear something in a lyric or a line that I'm writing down and I'll sit and I'll play with that. So I'll sit, I've got my guitars here, I've got my resonator, I've got a little guitar in here, I've got my electric over there and I'll literally just grab it and sit and try to work something out. I'll try it in different tunings. This one's always tuned into open, kind of an open string tuning. So I'll sit and just bash it out so I can kind of find something. Sometimes I will feel like I want to tell a story and I'll sit down and be like, oh, this is a funny story or something, and then I'll literally write it down. I'd break it up and then be like, oh, that could be a chorus, that could be a thing, and then I will sit down and see what comes of it.

Chris Erasmus: 19:10

Other days, especially when I'm back home on the farm, which is now cape town, I've got a little piano in the corner. It's about used to be my great, great grandmother's piano. She brought in on oxwagon and and I will um, sit and just play. I'm not a particularly good pianist. I I know chord progressions and I can figure out like what goes where and I will just have my phone recording and I'll just play. And a lot of the song listen came like that. You know, 2 am, thank goodness I live on a farm and I was out in the corner playing the song and it just came out. I was feeling that I wasn't heard and stuff in the music industry and I sat down and I wrote about being listened to and the stuff and the song came out relatively quickly. I wish that they all did like that. So it's a lot of. I try to stay as open as I can between the two.

Chris Erasmus: 19:55

Sometimes I like to collaborate. I haven't done a lot of that on the songs that are out already. There's only one song that's been heavily collaborated. But this new album that we're working on, I'm working with a lot of different people. I'm trying a lot of different ways of writing. I've got great producers on it, beautiful musicians, a couple of musical theatre MDs coming in, musical directors. I've got really great country artists writing on it.

Chris Erasmus: 20:20

I love collaborating as well. So it's nice to sit down, come up with an idea and then have somebody be like that's really dumb, let's try it this way. You know, I love, I love kind of the to and fro, or sitting in a room and starting with nothing and building something up, you know, uh, working with someone who's got a different process. Somebody's like, oh, I'm, I like starting with these chords, and then you progress from them and, well, I can't sing it up that high. Let's, you know, uh, go from that, or I can, I need to sing it higher.

Chris Erasmus: 20:46

So usually that's how I, how I kind of approach, approach it and then and then nailing it down, and then I'll have a few sounding boards, some friends that I'll be like, hey, listen, does this go into the trash can or or the trash pile, or does it go into the? Does it go into the let's, let's develop this idea pile? And I think it's important to have, you know, people that you trust around you to be able to be like, yeah, that's, that's not good or that sounds great, give it to somebody else saying it's not in your space which you know it's also something that happens and I think it's.

Jay Franze: 21:14

A lot of really good songs have been ruined by well, not necessarily ruined, but just not done justice because they've been sung by the wrong person so what I'm hearing from your description of your process is that there's times where you're inspired by a lyric and then there's times where you sit down at a piano and you start with music. So is there one of those processes that you lean into more often than the other?

Chris Erasmus: 21:41

Yeah. So if I, if I'm really kind of, I'm on the go a go a lot and I like to write down stuff, so I'm always carrying a notebook around, so a lot of it comes from lyrics. I like it when it comes from lyrics. I think if lyrics work, a lot of the time it'll give you the melody, it'll give you the way it wants to go. You know, if you use three words in a verse, then it can give you a lot of space in the song, whereas if you want to kind of tell a story, sometimes you find yourself talking like this and then you go on and find the melody from this and then you go from there, you know, find the if it's on guitar, find that progression and find that strumming pattern. So yeah, I do like to grow from lyrics if I can, but sometimes if I've got something in my head or there's a cool instrument that I want to mess around with and figure out, sometimes that gives you a couple of really good ideas.

Jay Franze: 22:36

I've always started lyrics first.

Chris Erasmus: 22:38

Oh yeah, you're a lyrics first guy. Yeah, fair enough.

Jay Franze: 22:40

You have to do lyrics first and, like you mentioned, the melody comes and then you can build the music around that.

Tiffany Mason: 22:46

Yeah, it kind of suggests itself yeah.

Jay Franze: 22:49

Yeah.

Tiffany Mason: 22:50

I love all of the musical instruments behind you so clearly. You play guitar. You mentioned you play piano. What other instruments do you play?

Chris Erasmus: 22:59

I played violin for seven years. I tend to leave that up to the professionals. It is ugly when I do it. It really is, but it's the only my housemates and neighbors genuinely complain is when I do it. My housemates and neighbors genuinely complain when I'm trying to work something out on the violin. It's ugly. I've played violin for seven years. Oh my goodness, it sounds like I'm hitting it on the head. My mom doesn't talk at all. She's very, very good. She likes it when I'm working and I'm singing, if I use violin or harmonica.

Chris Erasmus: 23:30

Oh, I'm singing along, yeah. So I'm always open to playing with stuff and I find any instrument that it's in that kind of realm I can figure out enough to kind of try something. Resonating guitar, slide guitar I'm very kind of rookie at, but I find it really puts me in a very uncomfortable place and trying different things that we don't really have resonating guitars where I'm from or where I studied and I know a lot of that comes from the States. You know you're Robert Johnson's and you're Right and I love that kind of feel of music. So kind of playing around with that, but not trying to be too appropriate, is really fun because it pushes you into a realm that you wouldn't normally do and you would listen to it differently.

Tiffany Mason: 24:13

I love how much you love pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. I mean, I feel like you almost seem to thrive there, or you look for opportunities for that, which is pretty cool.

Chris Erasmus: 24:23

Yeah, sometimes, sometimes it gets you injured, yeah.

Tiffany Mason: 24:27

I like that. Sometimes it gets you injured.

Jay Franze: 24:34

When you play the harp there, do you stick to a certain key or do you have different harps or different keys? Oh, I've got a whole whack of them.

Chris Erasmus: 24:42

Yeah, depending on what key I'm writing in, usually I will pick this up and put it in afterwards or see, kind of try to replace the guitar solo with that or something.

Tiffany Mason: 24:54

I always think and then I'll go and find somebody who can do it.

Chris Erasmus: 24:56

If I'm over-tracking, I'll get them to do it. Right, leave it to a person like exactly yeah, oh yeah, you gotta, you gotta, respect the, the high guns. There's some, there's some guys out there who are just just beautiful what they're doing and either hours I put into my voice, so you know they put into a guitar over there their instrument. The one thing I do like to do sometimes, instead of using a fiddle, I'll use a cello, oh, yeah, higher. So I've got a song coming out. Uh, we don't have an official date for it, but after the single that's coming out this month, we're gonna have another one come through. It's actually almost like a duet. So the way I'm singing that this is almost playing a country type style song, but it's following my uh, vocal patterns, very high cello as opposed to a fiddle, and it just gives it a different feel, which I think is pretty cool.

Tiffany Mason: 25:43

I feel like you might have been reading my mind because it seems like it keeps coming up in all of our conversations, and so I was going to ask if you had fiddle coming up in any of your songs. But interesting that you replace it with the cello sometimes. I think that's very creative.

Chris Erasmus: 25:58

Yeah, it was creative, and I don't think I could get a hold of a good fiddle player at the time, and there was a guy from Juilliard who was fresh out. He was like, hey, it was creative, amazing. So yeah.

Tiffany Mason: 26:12

Creative resourceful whatever.

Jay Franze: 26:16

Well as we talk about the musicians and the instruments, can you tell us about your relationship with Scott and how things are going?

Chris Erasmus: 26:20

Oh yeah, I love Scott. Scott and I met actually I think he did the vocals on that. He was just mixing the vocals on the song Fires, which went to the dance charts Right, and I kind of yeah, we kind of stayed in touch and I always bounce things off of him and he's such a wonderful kind of open man. He's very thoughtful, very resourceful and very kind of intelligent, not just not just knowledge based, but like musical based. So he's a producer you can really trust when you, when you're working on on things.

Chris Erasmus: 26:55

I love what he does with vocals. He's he's just brilliant with vocals. His work kind of speaks, speaks to that as well. And yeah, we just kind of we get in a studio, I mean we can, we, we kind of work on the same level. I mean, I think the last time we recorded together we got through four songs in one studio session. Yeah and like, so we can be very efficient when we work together, which is nice as well. And then obviously, like then obviously he always kind of takes these crazy ideas out of the like let's try cello, or let's bring this in, and he's always open to it and he always finds a way to make it work, or he knows someone, or he you know. If I want to steal a steel string or something in there, we can always find someone to do it, but do it in a way that kind of fits my vision for things, and he's also very good at being like no, you absolutely cannot do that.

Jay Franze: 27:48

Does he play any instruments?

Chris Erasmus: 27:50

I think Scott can play pretty much everything, but his specialty is keys.

Tiffany Mason: 27:54

And he's got a great ear, perfect pitch.

Chris Erasmus: 27:57

Yeah, I lean on him pretty heavily when we're in the studio because if I've missed a or something on one of my progressions a bit clunky, he'll be like oh, try this or try that, and he's very quick to pick that stuff up, so we don't we don't waste a lot of time trying to figure out every key on the keyboard and, yeah, it's a great relationship and I've been working with him now since like 2016 oh, wow, so then yeah, we've kind of, we kind of he's had to put up with me for a long time.

Jay Franze: 28:21

Right. I can only assume that perfect pitch is what makes him so good at coaching you, along with vocals.

Chris Erasmus: 28:28

Yes and no. I think he also finds a way of he kind of he can manage people very well, scott. He manages people really really well and he's very, very kind and he never feels judged in the studio, which is a big thing. You're going in, you've got these hot musicians and you've got Duff and you're trying to explain to the guys just come off tour with Ed Sheeran or that guitarist, that sounds wrong and he really finds a way to kind of run. No one ever works from a place of ego, no one ever works from a place of defense. So yeah, musically and pitch-wise and stuff, it helps. But I think he can do that and he does it all very easy. But the real genius is getting people in a comfortable place where they can express themselves and bring something of their own to the music.

Jay Franze: 29:17

What would be a negative to having perfect pitch?

Chris Erasmus: 29:22

I think listening to modern concerts, sometimes I say cringingly, or going to certain shows I mean I don't have perfect pitch. I wish I did. But even though I've sat in some concerts and been like dang, that makes its way off. I'm sure you've done it.

Jay Franze: 29:39

I hear a lot of people who say that have perfect pitch saying that they would prefer not to have it. They would prefer to have relative pitch.

Tiffany Mason: 29:46

Yeah, I wouldn't wish that on anybody. Perfect pitch.

Chris Erasmus: 29:50

Yeah, a lot of perfect pitch. People end up as producers, or you know Mozart's or Bach's, or you know. I had a couple of friends when I studied music and I was studying music and they were perfect pitch and they very quickly became 90 professors.

Jay Franze: 30:05

yeah, you lose the creative part.

Chris Erasmus: 30:08

Yeah, you're no longer being artistic, which Scott seems to have not struggled with at all, which is quite cool. He manages to keep both, which is kind of that genius, I suppose.

Jay Franze: 30:19

Well, you have a lot of things going on in your world, sir, between your theater, your dancing, your music. So how do you balance it all?

Chris Erasmus: 30:29

I mean, the cool thing is it all falls into a similar kind of basket. One thing pays for the other, and when the one thing is not paying for the other thing, I can go to the other thing to pay for it.

Jay Franze: 30:40

Right.

Chris Erasmus: 30:41

But I think, luckily for me, it's all kind of. You know, I've been cast as Johnny Cash and I've been in musicals and I've been so a lot of it. Sometimes I can learn from both sides. So, as much as it's really busy and it takes a lot of commitment I don't think more so than maybe you know your nine to five jobs, outside of the fact that I'll keep working until 2 am or until I get a ride, or you know, you've got to have that self-discipline to practice singing two hours a day and then practice guitar an hour a day and then get up and get your ass off the couch and go running because you've been in the studio all day.

Tiffany Mason: 31:24

It's a lot of the self-discipline and the regulation and and and the sport uh, that I was lucky enough to do really help. I love that you use the word discipline, because I think so many people look for motivation or willpower and I don't think that that's the right word. I think it's discipline. I think you're absolutely right. I mean.

Chris Erasmus: 31:35

Motivation is great, but it comes and goes. Consistency, discipline in anything, is what I try to rely on when you're under pressure or you think. A Gary player said the more I practice, the luckier I get.

Jay Franze: 31:50

Can we take that a step further? You're an athlete and you're very, very fit and you take on a lot of different disciplines, whether it be, like you mentioned, horse riding. I've seen pictures you kickboxing, you're out with the crossbow, I mean you're doing all sorts of things. So how do you take that drive? Can you make the parallel to applying it to the music world?

Chris Erasmus: 32:16

Yeah, um, I mean. So a lot of that stuff was I did. I worked as a stuntman on a few projects, especially after COVID when there was no work, so that pays better than most things All of it. Yeah, pretty much paid the bills for a while, that's how you got injured.

Chris Erasmus: 32:37

Funny enough, actually, the stunts I was fine with, believe it or not. I don't know how. It wasn't through lack of trying. We always had great stunt coordinators and they made sure we were pretty safe. But I think the best way to look at it is, if you ignore your scales or the basics on a guitar or doing your vocal exercises every day, that's what that is. It's doing the basics and trusting that the basics will give you the advanced stuff and you keep learning and keep trying new things and if you stop, you're going to get unfit. If you stop practicing guitar, you're going to get worse. If you stop singing, you stop writing. It's it so that it's that's.

Chris Erasmus: 33:15

It's the same constant improvement is what you're looking for yeah, it's that same program, it's the same level of focus and and drive that you need. You know being a performer is is hard work. I mean going on tour is exhausting. You're traveling, you eating food, you're not used to you, you're lack of sleep, you're talking in loud areas all the time, your voice is fatigued. If you haven't been doing like the training to be in position to succeed, you're going to not be able to finish a tour.

Chris Erasmus: 33:43

And I mean, if you look through the history of a lot of these young performers and I'm not saying that it can't happen, it does happen if you get ill or something but the old school performers who had to really kind of grind it out, you know your Bruce Springsteen's and I use him as an example because it's so impressive that he's still doing it at his age, at the level he's doing it at. You know it's a full-on concert that. And the guy's what? Late 70s, right and wild. It's unbelievable. I saw him play Wembley last year. I was going. How is he not playing? He's got the same energy as 21 year old. It's unreal. But he preps for it and he trains it and he and he works really hard. He keeps himself in shape. You eat right, you know it's, it's, it's the same approach.

Chris Erasmus: 34:24

And musical theater if you did, if just I think that taught that that really did teach to me like musical theory. People doing hs a week and you're doing hs a week, whether it's 100 degrees out, if you're feeling sick, if you like, you've got a show's got to happen. So that taught me a lot about like being prepared. You've got to the show's got to happen. So that taught me a lot about like being prepared. When you're not working is the time you've got to be working hardest to be ready for that stuff.

Tiffany Mason: 34:44

Mm-hmm Interesting.

Jay Franze: 34:47

When you were at UQ. What was it? You said, you played.

Chris Erasmus: 34:51

I did decathlon, decathlon.

Jay Franze: 34:53

So obviously you had to train extremely hard for that as well.

Chris Erasmus: 34:57

Yes, sir, I was lucky enough to be. I went to two national championships and I was lucky enough to be in a team with the Lone Olympians. It was quite a cool experience. That I've told you a lot.

Jay Franze: 35:06

You're really making me feel bad. Today, when this is over, I'm going to be running around the blocks several hundred times today.

Tiffany Mason: 35:16

Now he's going to go redeem his McDonald's reward.

Chris Erasmus: 35:20

Everyone's got to focus on what works for them, and that just kept me sane and it kept me in a place when I was studying business, which I was very grateful to study, but my passion was performing and acting and music and singing it kept my head straight.

Jay Franze: 35:33

That's a good point too. I've got that dual background between business and music or in my case it was engineering. So do you find yourself applying that business background to your music career?

Chris Erasmus: 35:50

Very rarely Money well spent.

Chris Erasmus: 35:54

That's what the PR firm is for I think for me it helps me understand my value. I think that's really important as a performer. Sometimes you don't understand the value of what you can bring to the table. Recently I had a gig, not in country music but in cabaret. They changed the deal on me and they changed it and I was like cool and I walked away. No one else did, I was the only one who did and everyone else wishes they had now. But it's understanding your value. And if, if, everyone's willing to work for, not for no money, then they're going to hire it.

Tony Scott: 36:23

No money yeah.

Chris Erasmus: 36:25

so there is an and we don't really have a very strong equity here compared to what you have in the states, especially like the unions, for like acting and performing. So we need to find a way to do that. But I think, as a business person, looking at contracts, understanding your value, understanding the value of something, this is great, but how many hours am I putting into it? How many hours is that taking away from me doing other things or doing other gigs? It gives you a bit of confidence when somebody puts a contract on in front of you, and understanding when they're talking about marketing, although marketing's landscape in the last five years has changed so drastically with TikTok and they keep changing their platform and Spotify keeps changing their platform, so I think those kind of things might have changed. But just understanding your value and the value of something and looking at yourself as a product can sometimes be beneficial.

Jay Franze: 37:16

You mentioned that willing to work for lower rates, and I used to teach at the Audio Engineering College in Nashville and we used to have students that would go out into the field all the time and everybody always tried to take gigs for free. They would always go out there and say, well, let me just start, let me get a couple under my belt. But what they're not understanding is there was a lot of time that they put into learning their craft. There was a lot of money that they put into paying for that school. There has to be a base rate that you've established just from that, just from the time and money that you've put into learning your craft. And what ends up happening is, when you're willing to work for free or lower rates, you're just knocking it down for everybody else that's worked their way up. So there should be some sort of standard.

Chris Erasmus: 38:01

I completely agree, and I think another way to look at it is are you doing this as a hobby or are you doing this as a profession? Right?

Tiffany Mason: 38:08

Yeah, a lot of perspective.

Chris Erasmus: 38:11

Yeah, and if you want to be a professional, you've got to get paid, otherwise you're not a professional.

Jay Franze: 38:17

Chris, we do this thing here. We call Unsung Heroes, where we take a moment to shine the light on somebody who's worked behind the scenes or may have supported you along the way. Do you have anybody that you'd like to shine a little light on?

Chris Erasmus: 38:27

Oh, I mean, I've got to say my parents, my dad and my mom, my long-suffering parents who really saw their son going to business school and they ended up being an actor and a performer, but they've really, they've really found a way to, to their credit, support me through every step and an industry they really don't understand, to really kind of support me and and you know, there's been months where I haven't been able to pay the rent or there's been months where I need a little extra for food and and I've been lucky to have that support base and I don't think I would be here without that. So I've really got to give credit to them and the kind of opportunities that they've given me and coming from Africa, you know that's not easy to do.

Jay Franze: 39:07

Understood, all right. Well, we have done it. We have reached the top of the hour, which does mean we have reached the end of the show. If you've enjoyed this show, as we say, tell a friend, miss tiffany. If not, tell two. If not tell two, you can reach out to all three of us over at jayfranze. com. We will be happy to keep this conversation going. Chris Sir, we cannot thank you enough for being here with us today. Can we leave the final words to you?

Chris Erasmus: 39:33

oh well, guys, thank you so much for having me. I'm on instagram cj rasmus, if anyone wants to reach out. Uh, have a chat. Uh listen to my music on spotify. And chris erasmus got new single dropping this month. Uh, we've got a new album coming, so keep a lookout for that and I hope to see you guys along the way soon perfect and I will put all the links to all that in the show notes for everybody appreciate it have a good day.

Tony Scott: 39:57

Thanks for listening to The Jay franzy Show. Make sure you visit us at jayfranze. com. Follow, connect and say hello.