Daily Sitka Sentinel

Guitar Virtuoso Making Return Visit to Sitka

By SHANNON HAUGLAND

Sentinel Staff Writer

It’s not hard for fellow musicians to describe the style and sound of guitarist Chris Proctor, who is playing a concert here on Saturday.

“It sounds like four musicians playing at once,” said Ted Howard, organizer for Sitka Folk, the sponsor of Proctor’s show. “It’s the bass line with his thumb, melody with one of his fingers and harmony lines with his other fingers. It’s simply amazing. ... When I closed my eyes I couldn’t believe there was only one person on stage.”

Chris Proctor will perform Saturday, 7 p.m. at the Sheet’ka Kwaan Naa Kahidi. (Photo Provided)

The concert starts at 7 p.m. at the Sheet’ka Kwaan Naa Kahidi, with an opening act by local performers Debby LeVeck and Jim Shepard.

Proctor’s acoustic guitar repertoire ranges from Americana to Celtic, to blues and more contemporary songs and tunes that are “more classic in construction – like chamber music.”

“He’s just very, very talented,” said Howard, who speaks as a guitar player himself.

“I’m amazed by the clarity and accuracy of his tone. ... He plays recognizable tunes, takes the arrangement and puts it into a guitar – you have Paul McCartney on bass, and John Lennon’s voice going at once.”

Proctor will also conduct a workshop 3 p.m. Sunday at The Loft, at 408 Oja Way, for guitar players of all abilities.

Proctor is traveling with both a six-string and the less well-known 12-string guitar, which he has a particular affection for. He usually leaves the 12-string at home when traveling, since carrying two protective cases is a little cumbersome.

But he said the 12-string is always a hit.

“They love hearing it, they’re knocked out by it,” Proctor said. 

Proctor started learning music the way most kids do – through band instruments – but it wasn’t for him.

“My parents did the usual damage with band instruments,” he said. “I wasn’t enjoying what they told me to learn.”

But his enthusiasm for playing music picked up when he went to a blues concert at age 14 or 15.

“It blew the top of my head off,” Proctor said. “I thought, I have to do that.”

He started on the guitar learning the blues, listening to and trying to play like Mississippi John Hurt, Blind Blake and Big Jim Davis, and “any blues player you can name.”

“You listen to the recordings and then play in that style,” he said.

Proctor also drew inspiration from the music of Leo Kottke and John Fahey, and songs from the British Isles.

“I got a notion that you can make stuff up if you had that acoustic skill and be the whole band – there were incredible possibilities there,” he said.

That’s what he does today, at age 65, touring full time, being the full band with a six-string or 12-string guitar.

He was last in Sitka five years ago for a concert and workshop, both of which were well-attended, Howard said.

“Everyone who went to the workshop left a better player than when they went in,” Howard said.

Proctor remembers that visit well. The Alaska tours he has done gives him plenty of time in each community, since it’s nearly impossible to play a show a day, traveling from town to town across the state. He said Alaska is “not the most efficient” state to tour in given the distances between communities and logistics of getting around, but he does have more time to enjoy the scenery.

“You only play for two hours. The rest of the time you’re living somewhere,” he said. “People think it’s about the music, but it’s not.”

In Sitka, he remembers walking to Sitka National Historical Park to watch the fish run.

“I had a wonderful walk – or run-walk – to the river, filled with dying salmon,” he said. “It’s not something a Utah boys sees very often. Sitka’s a beautiful town – I flew in in the morning, and it was just beautiful.”

Proctor is finishing up a five-week tour with gigs in Sitka and Petersburg, after an Alaska multi-city tour that included Talkeetna, Fairbanks, Seward, Valdez, Anchorage and Wasilla, before returning to his home in Salt Lake City.

He said he did collect a few fans from a tour decades ago, getting around the Kenai peninsula with the help of bush pilot Tom Thibodeau, who inspired a song. At his stop in Valdez this year, a handful of people showed him the LPs they bought at his concert there in 1984, just a few years after he started recording.

“Here they were, 32 years later and 10 (records) later, and they’re still hanging in Valdez, still listening to the music,” he said.

It was 20 years before he came back.

“I’ve enjoyed my time in Alaska,” said Proctor. “If I wanted to be most efficient I would stay at a Holiday Inn Express, and play lots of music.”

Today he focuses more on touring in places he wants to visit and spend time in, including the West Coast and Europe.

“Alaska’s at the top of that list,” he said.

Tickets for the 7 p.m. Saturday show at Sheet’ka Kwaan Naa Kahidi are $20 for general admission and $15 for students and seniors, available at Old Harbor Books.

The fee for the Sunday workshop is $10, also sponsored by Sitka Folk.