Genre:		Pop
For fans of:		MercyMe, Switchfoot, Casting Crowns, Matthew West
Label:		Brash Music

Running Back to You (2008)

As Half Past Forever:
Take a Chance on Something Beautiful (2007)

In these days of manufactured celebrity, it takes a lot to stand out from the cookie-cutter crowd. It takes someone with real talent, guts, charisma, and maybe a wardrobe that won't earn him a GQ spread anytime soon.

Someone, that is, like Chris Sligh. Problem is, there isn't anyone "like Chris Sligh" except for Chris Sligh. And that, of course, is the point. If you watched him rock it and sock it back to American Idol on Season 6, or riff with Jay Leno and Little Richard on The Tonight Show, you know that you will never, ever forget him.

	Buy 'em here! Running Back to You Take a Chance on Something Beautiful

For Chris Sligh is a genuine original, blessed with a golden voice, a style of songwriting that communicates even as it defies the commercial "rules," and a world view that encompasses edgy humor, rebelliousness, and rocksolid faith.

All these elements breathe life into every moment of his new album, Running Back to You. From the soaring resonance of "In a Moment" to the sly rhyming of "Love is Raining Down," Sligh manages to be funny, entertaining, provocative, inspirational, and maybe a little cheeky, all at the same time. His music is rich in character; his character overflows with music. His reverence is no less real for being at times irreverent.

And more amazing than this is the fact that, for all the ground he's covered so far, this unique artist is only just starting to tap into what he has to offer to the world.

From the beginning, Chris Sligh's story didn't conform to the norm.

He was born into a musical but conservative family. His father was a gifted guitarist, singer, and songwriter who nonetheless banned non-classical music from his household. At night he would play recordings of works by Mozart or Beethoven as bedtime music; Chris, at age four or five, would listen, picking out

and singing along with individual parts of the composition—maybe the second violin or lead viola—until finally falling asleep.

Growing up in Germany, where his father worked as a chaplain among American troops, Chris was in his own words a "typical jock." His enthusiasm for sports mirrored that of millions of guys his age back in the States—yet being far from home, he also developed a complex way of looking at life, in which elements of skepticism and worldliness tempered his church-based upbringing.

"When you look back at past leaders, both church and historical, they all had a rebellious streak. Obviously, I wouldn't put myself in the same ballpark as those leaders, but I have always had that rebellious streak … I want to find truth and that makes me ask a lot of questions. In asking a lot of questions, you sometimes question authority. But I'd rather err on that side than be led blindly down the

wrong road."

As with his music and theater, which began taking root during high school, the seeming contradictions in his outlook ultimately strengthened him artistically. Inspired by actors such as Jack Black, Will Farrell, Kevin Spacey, and Ben Stiller, all of them leading men who infused their roles with offbeat elements of character,

Sligh developed an approach that involved finding that place where the way he presented himself onstage intersected with elements of his offstage personality.

Beginning his college study in pre-law at Pensacola Christian College in Florida, Sligh transferred in his sophomore year to Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina, an equally fundamentalist institution but one that also offered more advanced opportunities for achieving his goals. "I wanted to major in music," he says. "This freaked my parents out, because music is the most unmarketable degree there is. But I told them, 'I don't need jobs. I'm going to be a singer!' And of course, that freaked them out royally."

Despite having had no previous formal instruction, Sligh progressed rapidly in the school's vocal performance program, to the point of understudying major baritone and tenor roles in student opera productions and being invited to audition both for The Juilliard School and the Metropolitan Opera in New York. At the same time, he pursued a parallel interest in theater, going beyond the Shakespeare roles he had tackled in high school to earn an A+ in playwriting and explore the Stanislavsky Method of stage performance.

All these efforts came to a sudden end in December of his senior year, when Sligh was expelled for attending a Christian rock concert, apparently as great a transgression at Bob Jones as joining a coven. Looking back, though, he believes now that it was the best thing that could have happened to him: "Probably a year before that, I'd realized that I'd wanted to leave," Sligh says. "So getting kicked out was a blessing in disguise. And four months later, I recorded my first album." That debut, Vessel, was a solo acoustic project, self-produced and self-released. Touring at first on his own, building a following through coffeehouse gigs and word of mouth, he stretched his musical and lyrical range.

Over the next few years he put several groups together, leading eventually to Half Past Forever, whose dynamic shows stirred major label interest and elevated Sligh toward a breakthrough into the mainstream pop/rock market.

But then, in 2006, Sligh auditioned for American Idol, more or less on a whim. To his surprise, his performance swept him onto a fast track to the final rounds. His willingness to take chances, his ironic wit, and his startlingly powerful vocals embedded him into the popular imagination. And his distinctive blend of talent, humor, confidence, and unpredictability led to an exchange with Simon Cowell that astonished and delighted the other judges, host Ryan Seacrest, and much of America.

"There had never been a smart aleck on American Idol," Sligh says, chuckling at the memory of the night he stood up to the notoriously acerbic Idol judge. "They'd never had someone who would come back to Simon in a genuinely funny way. But I had no problem being who I am, no matter what good or bad consequences that would bring.

This moment, like a bravura theater performance, stemmed from both careful preparation and a willingness to seize the moment. "I'd done a ton of research," Sligh says, chuckling at the memory of the night he stood up to the Idol judge. "They'd really never had someone come back at Simon, so I'm thinking, 'I can sing as well as just about anybody, so I'm going to make this about being funny. There's no way I'm going home before the top 24, because I'm going to make them need me."

Though he didn't win, Sligh did captivate and stir discussion among the millions of American Idol viewers. He also demonstrated that he knew how to do whatever needed to be done to turn a performance, whether through singing or spoken words, into a home run. "With a song, you have three minutes to cram in as much information as possible," he observes.

Sligh's willingness to challenge convention and to take creative risks is evident throughout Running Back to You. Produced by Brown Bannister (Amy Grant, MercyMe, Steven Curtis Chapman, The Afters), with guest coproduction from renowned musicians Will Owsley and Stephen Leiweke the project will evoke other artists of passion and commitment, from Switchfoot to the Killers. In the end, though, the lesson is reaffirmed—namely, that Chris Sligh simultaneously touches the heart and rocks the house.

Yes, his story is still just beginning—but it starts with an explosion of soul and sound, right here, right now.

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