Page 22 - ABILITY Magazine - Avril Lavigne Issue

music. He had a guitar on this wall, a guitar on that wall, a banjo over there, a little piano over there... posters all over the place. I fell in love with the atmos- phere. So he handed me a guitar, and taught me the C chord, D chord, and G chord, and left me there. It was like, “Good luck, Buddy!”
(laughter)
And it’s funny, I locked the door because I became obsessed, strumming those three chords. The biggest issue a guitar player faces is working through the pain in your fingertips, and how fast you can change chords. I was going at it for hours, and still wasn’t getting it. And at 4 in the morning, I’m yelling. My stepmom comes downstairs and says: “What is wrong with you? You’re wakin’ the entire neighborhood!” And I said, “I just don’t understand! My dad’s so good at this, and I suck!” I started blaming my condition, I was like, “Obviously because of cerebral palsy I’m gonna suck as a musician!”
Geri Jewell, family & friends mesmerized by Chris Hendricks and his music during the Sedona World Wisdom Days
Jewell: You were exhausted, so your body wasn’t cooperating.
picked up the instrument and learned it, I realized why there were no baritone players in the band. It was the instrument with the least amount of sex appeal. At least if you played the tuba, you could brag about it being the biggest instrument. The baritone was like the tuba’s little brother. It’s a tuba with self-esteem issues. But our band director desperately wanted a baritone sax player.
Hendricks: I was totally exhausted and in a lot of pain. And my stepmom said, “Go to sleep, wake up the next morning, and see if your body learned something.” And I said: “That’s not how it works!” But that’s totally how it works, because when I woke up later that morning at about 10, I rolled out of bed, ran downstairs, and tried to play the chords again, and sure enough, I was able to switch.
Jewell: So there’s always a student who has to play it, regardless?
Zimmerman: You kept at it.
Hendricks: I’m sure that if I had really put my foot down and been like, “Screw it, too bad, there’s not gonna be any baritones in your band,” it would have worked out. But at that time I didn’t have my own voice. It took me a long time to find it.
Hendricks: I did, and then it clicked. I fell in love with the instrument. The first song my dad taught me on the guitar was “Let Her Cry” by Hootie and the Blowfish. I haven’t put the guitar down since.
Jewell: You didn’t take music in high school?
Zimmerman: And you did find your voice, even writing your own songs. What was the first song you wrote?
Hendricks: I was in chorus and band.
Hendricks: The first song I ever wrote was called “Malpractice.”
Zimmerman: What did you play?
Hendricks: I played—well, another reason why I didn’t jump to guitar until after college was that I wanted to play tenor sax. If I was going to be in band, I saw the tenor sax as the coolest thing on the planet. Plus, Lisa Simpson of The Simpsons played it, and she was always a badass.
Zimmerman: Where did that come from?
Zimmerman: (laughs) Right!
Hendricks: It was essentially a metaphor for what my condition had done to my life. My mom was doing the best she could, but she didn’t know how to help me find my wings.
Hendricks: But I was a soft-spoken kid, and to some degree I’m still that way around certain people. So I said once or twice, “I want to play the tenor sax,” and our band director really wanted me to play the baritone sax, because there were no baritone players in the band. As soon as I
Zimmerman: You found them through music?
Hendricks: Absolutely.
Zimmerman: How many songs have you written?
Hendricks: Hundreds. I was passionate about expressing
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