Chris Terp of Worcester cover band Touched and Worcester blues band On The Five has been a very busy guy for the last two years.
He was also the winner of his local version of Guitar Center’s nation wide King Of The Blues talent search. Each contestant starts at the local level, and some will go all the way to finals in Las Vegas. That makes Terp officially King Of The Blues in Millbury, Massachusetts.
The district competition will be held on June 23rd at Guitar Center’s Natick, Massachusetts store, and if Terp gets through that one, he’ll be competing in Brooklyn, New York on July 16th and on to the finals. “There’s still a ways to go in this whole thing. There’s a lot of good players,” he said.
Terp’s two bands, cover band Touched, and his blues project, On The Five, give him two different kinds of outlets for his creativity. Blues is much more his thing, though. On The Five, a year old blues band, plays out in Sturbridge, Worcester, Dudley, Leominster, and Millbury. “Most of us have kids and jobs, so we don’t want to travel all that far,” he said.
Terp always loved blues music and he has been a huge Allman Brothers fan for a long time. “It’s only been in the last three years that I’d taken any serious interest in learning about old blues,”Terp said. “Now I’m learning about guys like Albert King and Albert Collins. If it weren’t for them, no matter what I was doing with the rock stuff, this would have never have happened. I’ve been expanding my horizons a little.”
Terp loves blues because it allows him a lot of freedom as a player. “You can be thrown into a situation with people you don’t know and as long as they know how to play, you can do great things with three simple little chords,” he said. “It’s all about putting your personality on it.”
Terp feels he expresses himself more to his live audiences in his blues band, On The Five, than in his cover band. He is also the lead vocalist in his blues outfit, and that accounts for part of his freedom.
“That’s been an even bigger expansion for me, learning how to put feeling into a vocal,” he said. “That’s doing it with the guitar as well, not showing how technically good you are. You can make one note say everything instead of playing a million notes to look faster than the other guy.”
Terp sited Albert King as an example of someone who could make a lot of feeling with fewer notes. “You play that one right note, you just play it, play it, play it, and you don’t just hear it, you feel it. That is the big difference, to me, between blues stuff and rock stuff. You can really convey emotion playing blues, much more so than playing in a rock cover band.”
Blues is all about feeling, Terp said. “Anybody can pick up an instrument and learn three chords, but to play the blues the way people like to hear,” he said, “it takes much more emotion and not necessarily skill. A lot of the old blues guys hardly knew anything technically about what they were doing. They just heard, felt it, and played it.”
Terp pointed out that B.B. King doesn’t know how to play a significant amount of rhythm guitar, but that he easily compensates for expressing all of his emotions. “He just plays what he hears,” Terp explained. “I was reading an article one time (about Albert King who) used to get very agitated recording albums because he had to learn all the stuff note for note. He was not a technical guy, either. But when you can do those kinds of things, and really be able to connect your heart and your soul to your instrument, that’s what makes it great. You don’t have to be Eddie Van Halen to be great.”
Terp too tries to bare his soul to his audience. “That’s really the goal,” he said, “and the funny part is, it has kind of extended itself even into the cover band. I’ve always been a guy that has just played off the top of my head. I’m not a big learn it off the record guy; just learn the song, figure out how it’s going to work for you and go play.”
Terp’s blues band, On The Five, also features Henry James on bass and vocals, John Clark on sax, and Herzi Xha on drums. Mr. Xha is a graduate of Berklee College of Music. Terp learned his trade in the cordial rooms of the Worcester music scene, starting out at music bars at age 17; he will turn 40 in a couple of weeks.
The Worcester scene has always offered him enough rooms for his comfort level. He has never been too interested in driving too far for a gig. Terp did have to travel when he was member of the New Hampshire cover band Bad Medicine, but only for a couple of years.
Terp, in elementary, school, was required to try an instrument, so he picked the trumpet, and he had a great time with it until the end of his school years. “And then I heard Van Halen,” he said. “I didn’t want to play trumpet any more.” After high school, Terp hooked up with a working band in the Milford-Franklin area. He was lucky his parents were cool enough to let him play bars at age 17.
Terp also enjoys playing in Worcester-based cover band, Touched, describing it as great unit of players. The four year old cover outfit has had the same line up for four years. “We don’t have to play perfect,” he said. “We just have to play it and have fun.”
It is the harmony lines with lead vocalist Christine Greenawalt(also his lady friend) that gets him most excited about Touched. “When we can do Eagles type stuff, and we can really be able to pull those harmonies out, it just makes you tingle in a way,” he said.
Terp grew up in the Milford area, and he moved out to the city 15 years ago. The Worcester scene has been a great breeding ground for Terp’s talent and for everybody else he knows. “I like the camaraderie,” he said. “The musicians all know each other. They’re all real supportive. It’s a real close community. Every now and then I wind up filling in gigs here and there. You’re able to do that because you know all these people.”
Touched is play the Milbury VFW tomorrow night.
