Chris Crown is an acoustic fingerstyle blues artist who blends many music styles from folk, rock, and jazz while always rooted in traditional blues. Born Chris Lawrence in the small Northern Michigan town of Alpena, Crown was brought up in a musical household. With folk influences from his mother, jazz and blues influences from his father, hip hop from his older brother, electronic music from his older sister and punk and ska from his younger sister, Crown began to blend these into his own unique sound. Performing with many high school bands including Dig Dug, Lucid Thumb, H.H. Bliss, and Half-Brassed, Crown honed his guitar skills. Upon graduation, Crown studied Music Industry Management at Ferris State University and began to delve deeper into blues music. "Blues music has always been my favorite genre and my first guitar lessons included 12- bar blues jams with my dad."
Upon earning his Masters in Business Administration degree, Crown began teaching blues history classes infusing them with live fingerstyle guitar talents in order to promote this artform and preserve it for future generations. Crown's 2006 EP titled "Silvertone Blues" contains covers of his favorite songs from blues legends Robert Johnson, Lead Belly, Mance Lipscomb, Johnny Cash, and Leroy Carr. Crown's rendition of the traditional song "Take Me Back" offers a glimpse of Crown's unique energy and ability to add a contemporary element to the classic blues repertoire. His latest album titled, "The Sun's gonna shine" received 3 Jammie award nominations from Grand Rapids' radio station, WYCE and is availble through Cdbaby.com, iTunes and Amazon.
Crown's recent obsession with the blues genre and its history has taken him on pilgrimages to Detroit, Chicago, Memphis and the Mississippi Delta. Crown has met a number of his blues idols including John Hammond Jr., Rory Block, Kelly Joe Phelps, Eric Bibb, Chris Smither and James Cotton.
Crown continues to perform and teach blues history lessons around his home base of Alpena, MI.
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