Real People Empty Nesting

An Interview with Chris M. Slawecki

by Robin C. Bonner

An Eclectic Mix
Chris Slawecki—copywriter, jazz reviewer, sports enthusiast, lover of golden retrievers, husband, and father—is now also an empty nester. One thing’s for certain, though, with Chris’s eclectic mix of interests: Writing has been his lifelong passion, and unlike many writers who are just as dedicated, he’s made it work both as a career and as a hobby. And, in that achievement, you can rest assured that Chris’s accommodating personality played no small role. Recently, Chris was kind enough to share his story with Empty Nest. It proved to be, in the words of songwriter Carole King, “a tapestry of rich and royal hue.”

EN: You are a writer by profession. Was it always this way? Tell us how your writing career began. Favorite reading or writing in childhood? High school? College? Choice of major? Your career path—was it a straight road or a winding path? That is, did you want to be a writer as a child, then follow that path steadfastly, or did you come upon your writing career in some other way?

CMS: I’ve been very fortunate. I graduated with an English degree from Villanova University and pretty much have made a living as a writer ever since. Every situation wasn’t exactly what you would call a professional writing engagement, but writing has been a constant theme in every job I’ve had, and I’ve mainly been just a writer for the past 10 years or so.

I was one of those quiet kids who really loved to read, you know? And I remember writing the stupid little sing-song poems that you write as a kid, then trying to write song lyrics and poetry when I started to listen to a lot of music in high school. I usually did best in English class, and…I never really thought of it until you asked, but I guess I did do a lot of writing in high school?the newspaper, the yearbook, and we had a literary magazine for which I wrote some short stories and poems. I guess I really have been writing my whole life.

In college, I began as a psychology major, then became a prelaw major and after that didn’t know what to do. Again, all my best grades were in my English classes, which were also my favorite classes, so it seemed natural to be an English major. I got involved with the school paper and the radio station as my love for music grew, so I picked up a communications minor, and ended up graduating with a course load that the school would eventually turn into its journalism major.

College was where I began to figure out that I really like to write. Stronger than that?I really need to write. I took a course on James Joyce that genuinely changed my life. First of all, it was extremely cool to be taking a Joyce class at a Catholic university, and second there were the rumors that our teacher was a defrocked priest. And third was when he brought a bottle of Murphy’s Irish Whiskey (his name was Dr. Murphy; I won’t tell you his first name) and some little plastic medicine cups into our final exam. We spent the entire second half of the semester on Ulysses and our final exam was one essay question. Half your grade would depend upon how you answered this one question. He handed out this single sheet with one question on it, pointed to the stack of blue books and the bottle on his desk, and walked out. I filled four blue books, at least. Joyce either continues to inspire or ruin me, depending upon whom you ask.

After graduation, I end up working as a file clerk for the defense division of General Electric?it was local?trying to figure out where an English major fit into the military-industrialist complex, you know? Some of the stuff I was filing was simply atrocious, what with the misspellings, and I mean like not even getting “Dear Sir” right. So one day I asked the librarian I reported to, “Do you guys really send out stuff like this?” She got such a look on her face, like she felt the same way and had finally found an ally. Pretty quickly after that, she helped get me into ghostwriting these sorts of letters, then the reports they were attached to, then the projects the reports were attached to.

I worked for 13 years at what was General Electric when I started but Lockheed-Martin when I left. I was ready to get out of government defense contracting. I’ve written so many different ways and for so many different places since then. I’ve worked for a weather company, music retailers, a clinical research company, an eBusiness consultancy. Becoming an English major was probably the best decision I ever made for my career, to tell the truth. As funny as that might sound.

There’s a great Simpsons scene about reading and books that I love to share when someone gets me going like this. It’s in the episode where Homer has to go back to college to keep his job at the nuclear plant, but he’s too lazy to bother with the application, so he gets Lisa to do it for him. She reads him the question, “What are the three books that most influenced your life, and why?” And he answers, “Does TV Guide count?”

That’s a great question, isn’t it? What are the three books that most influenced your life, and why? I’d like to be able to say that one’s the Bible, but that’s probably not being honest. TV Guide is a great answer!

Ulysses would obviously be the first. It really changed everything for me pretty quick after that?the way I read and the way I write, the way I think about reading and writing, and the way I think about everything. I’ve probably been through it about two dozen times by now, and to me it’s the reigning work of 20th-century genius in the English language.

The Tao of Pooh is another. It explores the concepts of Taoism in terms of the characters of The House at Pooh Corner, and Tao changed my world view, too. Tao is also the only book that I ever picked up to read and didn’t put down until it was finished. I was going through a rough personal time and spent some time visiting a friend at his apartment. Naturally, as soon as I got there, he got called into work. So I was alone in his place for a few hours and the book was sitting on his lampstand like it was there waiting for me, and I read it through in one sitting. You’d be amazed at how much of yourself you’ll meet in the pages of that book.

The third one is a collection of works by a music journalist named Lester Bangs, called Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung. I used to read Lester’s work in Creem magazine back in the late ’70s, and Lester was to music journalism in this country what Hunter S. Thompson was to political journalism. He had a great way of putting himself into the music, putting himself into his stories, that sort of dragged you right in there along with him. When I get stuck in a dry patch in writing about music, I almost always pull out and reconnect with some of Lester’s work, and it energizes and reminds me what I’m supposed to be doing. Writing about music is not writing about a cure for brain cancer. Music is supposed to be about having a good time, so writing about music should be a good time too.

My current full-time job is as senior copywriter for a nonprofit membership association for professionals in drug development and clinical research. We have a member newsmagazine and professional development magazine and just lots of stuff that has to be written. It’s fun, too.

EN: You write for a living, but you also write for fun. Describe your main interests (jazz music and sports?) and how you’ve been able to blend these loves with your writing career over the years. Your favorite musicians? Your favorite sports teams? How did you get your start writing about these special interests, and where has that taken you today?

CMS: The Internet revolution happened at absolutely the right time for me, like it did for so many other writers. So many different avenues and outlets popped up with opportunities for writers like me.

I’m a walking example of the classic “nature versus nurture” or “heredity versus environment” debate, I think. My two favorite things in the world, besides my family and our golden retrievers, are basketball and music. And living just outside of Philadelphia, I couldn’t be in a better area for both. So I often wonder, do I enjoy living here so much because of these things, or do I enjoy these things so much because I live here?

I absolutely remember the first review I ever wrote, on David Bowie’s album Lodger, and I’ll never forget how the whole thing came about. Toward the end of my freshman year at Villanova, I got up the courage to go to the newspaper office. I filled out an “interest card” to let them know to contact me next September if they needed help with music articles for the paper.

I’m home for the summer and I get a phone call in mid-August from some person I’ve never heard of. She had gotten my name and number from that interest card and, hey, could I prepare two articles by next Tuesday and bring them to a layout meeting next Tuesday night? I remember almost literally vibrating when I hung up that phone?I was shaking. Excitement and fear.

I walked into that room a complete stranger?no pressure, right? I found out later that the guy who was supposed to be the entertainment section editor that upcoming year got suspended from school because he was caught growing weed in his room, and while the editors were thrashing around the office trying to figure out how to fill that section in the first issue without this guy, someone found my interest card. It was just as much luck as anything else, I guess. But being on the school paper and writing about music at a formative time in my listening, growing as a writer, and having a radio show all at once were things that made up the best part of my college experience?not only the most enjoyable but the most important, no doubt about it.

So I’ve been writing about music for decades. I admit that for a lot of that time it was for free, just for the byline and the feeling of getting the words expressed. I guess if you try to do something the right way long enough, folks eventually notice. In 1997, I came onboard AllAboutJazz.com as a contributor, and I’m now a senior editor. My regular column is called “From the Inside Out.” I like to take music that’s “not jazz,” that you wouldn’t file under jazz on Amazon, let’s say, and try to explore and explain it in ways that might get jazz fans interested in it, and correspondingly try to explain music that “is jazz” in ways that appeal to folks who think they don’t like it. It sounds so complicated and pretentious to explain it that way, because it’s really something so much more intuitive than that for me. The more I listen to jazz and write about it, the more I am beginning to think that jazz isn’t a style of music or way of playing; it’s more a way of listening to or thinking about every style of music.

Last year, I was asked to contribute to the Stax Records blog, which has been a real honor for me. Stax was founded in 1957, and last year the label re-launched to celebrate its 50th anniversary. Just to have the opportunity to write about artists like Isaac Hayes, who was my first favorite artist, Booker T. & the MGs, Albert King, and all of that good blues and soul stuff was a thrill for me, and it’s very flattering to be asked to contribute to that the blog.

Last year I was also asked to serve as the “jazz voice” for the Concord Music Group Web site. This group owns the most amazing jazz, blues, and soul catalog across about 30 different labels, I think. Concord is its own label, but it’s also now the parent company for the back catalogs of legendary jazz labels like Prestige and Riverside and Milestone. I am able to write about artists such as Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane, all pillars of the community I’m walking around in now, but I still find it pretty hard to believe that a company like this wants its jazz voice to be my voice, you know?

Finally, to shift gears?and I’m very grateful for you letting me go on like this? through one of my previous professional lives I met the gentleman who is now founder and president of the Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame, and I help write the program for the induction ceremony every year, at least so far. I’ve had some pretty amazing experiences at those ceremonies. Last year, I wrote the induction biography for Earl “The Pearl” Monroe, who was one of my favorite New York Knicks back in the day, and got to meet and talk about his biography with him at the induction; another year, my father (who always goes as “my date”) and I shared a dinner table with Eric Gregg and Stan Hochman, just the four of us at our own table. Man, the stories those two can tell!

EN: Tell us about your family. Does your wife share your interests? What does she do for a living? How old are your children? What are their interests? Their college majors? Through the years, how have you been able to blend your interests and activities with those of your other family members?

CMS: My wife is very involved with children. She works at a child day care center, she helps manage childcare and Sunday school lessons for our church, and she’s been a director for the Phoenixville Area School District for the past 8 years. She feels as strongly about children as I do about writing and music, but I wouldn’t say we share very many interests. We both really love music, but we love very different music. Same with movies. We’re more of a match in terms of our personalities and dispositions.

We have two children. Our daughter will soon be 25 and is working full time while she wraps up the 13 credits she needs to finish her history degree from West Chester University, we hope. Our son just turned 22 and is completing his communications degree, also from West Chester. Our son is more the writer than our daughter. He was asked to speak at his graduation, and he wrote a great bit about The Wizard of Oz and high school. He’s got a very personable, personal writing style. It’s almost too comical sometimes. Pretty sad day for me when I realized he didn’t want dad to proofread his assignments anymore. As a communications major, he’ll need to do a lot of writing professionally no matter what his career turns out to be, so I guess maybe my career has had some influence there.

My wife’s the perfect earth mother mom, you know? I’m more of the stomp around the house kind of dad. I didn’t do a lot of things right with our children, but I will say this: Neither one of our children went to college to get a job. They went to get an education. Okay, they went for two things. Both our kids love college hoops. Conference championship week and the three weeks of March Madness are the best 4 weeks of the year in our house.

EN: How has the fact that your children have reached adulthood changed how you spend your time? Are you able to pursue your own interests more fully? Are you and Jill able to do more together? What writing plans do you have for the future? Any book deals in the works? If you had your druthers, what would you most like to do now? Do you have interests outside of writing that you’d like to pursue?

CMS: It is so rewarding to see your children grow into independent adults who can stand and walk and run on their own. I don’t know if that gives me any time to do any more work, but I do know that I have been doing a lot more work lately! Jill and I had two children by the time we were 23 and 25, and we did miss out on a lot of romantic and play kind of stuff that young couples without children get to do, I’m sure. But we’re almost on the other side of that now. And it’s nice to be able to come home, find out that your son is having dinner with his girlfriend and your daughter is also out with friends, and “It’s just you and me for dinner tonight, honey, where do you want to go?” Some folks get to do that in their 20s. We had to wait until we were in our 40s. But I think the fact that we didn’t get to spend a lot of time alone, just the two of us, early in our relationship helps us appreciate it more, at least sometimes, when it happens now.

I’m going to keep on keepin’ on with AllAboutJazz.com and the Stax and Concord Records blogs as long as they’ll have me. Supposedly some new stuff is coming up for the Concord Web site, and I’ll be able to program Top 10 playlists?you know, like the top 10 Miles Davis ballads, the top 10 jazz tunes with vocals, stuff like that?that I hope works out. Honestly, it’s pretty rewarding for a jazz writer to be asked to put together a list of his favorite Miles Davis tunes, you know?

There is something else coming up, and I hope I don’t jinx it by mentioning it. Last September we adopted a golden retriever from a wonderful rescue organization, the Delaware Valley Golden Retriever Rescue. Buster was held captive in a puppy mill for his first 5 years. He was pretty much kept in a cage for his entire life, brought out just to stud and…it’s just horrible, what some of these dogs go through. How it came about is a really long story, but eventually we brought Buster home. We have another golden, a female named FaithBuffy, and they’re a great match. Anyway, you have lots of emotional issues with breeder dogs from puppy mills, and one of the ways that the folks in this rescue organization are so supportive is that they keep you in touch with an on-call animal behaviorist to help everyone through the rough spots.

So we got to know a wonderful animal therapist, Chris Shaughness. Chris has been working with and collecting stories of breeder dogs like Buster for years, and if you could ever meet Buster or another rescued breeder dog you’d know why our hearts are so touched by them.

Through Buster, Chris and I have “found” each other. She had previously written a “how to care for” book about breeder dogs but has also been keeping these great character sketches of Buster and dogs like him. She’s weaving them together into a book, and we’re going to get together to write it and get it published. She needs a writer to help. I am a writer who needs to help. We both want to help these dogs. It’s just amazing how it looks like it might work out. At least we hope so.