Listen: Yesterday, we heard our first of four interviews from this week's Make Milwaukee tour guide, Brent Gohde ( we peaked inside the fascinating and brilliant world of Joe Locher). For our second installment, Brent finds an answer to the question "What is Milwaukee's creative community?" just down the road from the Pritzlaff in that ladybug building on Water Street.
When Brent and I were originally discussing Milwaukee's creative community, Brent said something to the effect of, "Everybody knows an artist or musician who works side jobs to do what they really want." Yeah. I agreed. So rather than picking an artist-friend out of a hat for an interview, Brent wracked his brain for some one who fully embodies this idea -- somebody who's worked really hard for a long time because of their need to create or perform.
And so, we find ourselves in the cozy practice space of longtime Milwaukee musician and entertainer Chris Tishler.
(photo by: Betsy Rowbottom)
In this first piece, we do a lickety-split genealogy of Chris' long and winding band history in Milwaukee (I put Chris on the spot for this, so please forgive us if he missed one or two), followed by a discussion his 15 years as the lead singer of the Five Card Studs:
We discussed the dichotomy of cover bands and original bands at length in this interview, and I think most of conversation can be boiled down to a pitch-perfect comment made by Chris that I'll paraphrase as: "When a band's on stage killing it, it doesn't matter what they're playing -- they're killing it."
In the second piece, we get the story behind a simple video Chris inconspicuously posted online (see above). He's sitting in his kitchen, playing "Ace of Spades" on an acoustic guitar. Brent happened upon this video and felt it said something important about Chris:
In the first piece we encounter a character whose passion for the limelight is only surpassed by his love for the ladies. In the second we meet a talented musician who needs to make music but can barely keep it together when playing for others. Both are Chris Tishler. What an interesting guy.