Chance (artist)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- This article is about Chance, an independent American alternative rock musician. John Barnes Chance was another American composer.
Chance is a solo musician from Los Angeles, California, but was born and raised in Florida. He initiated his own backing band The Choir, but on occasion also plays acoustic solo shows. Although he has expressed wishes to tour through the United States as well as the United Kingdom, he has so far only performed in Florida and North- and South California.
Chance has had piano lessons throughout most of his childhood, and in High School he learnt how to play the upside-down left-handed guitar. In his late teens, he moved to Los Angeles and got signed to TVT Records with his band Portable. He started his solo career early 2004.
There are many unique features to the approach of Chance. Being gifted with multiple talents, Chance does many things by himself. In his Portable days he worked together with professionals such as Brad Wood and Tim Palmer, experiences that now enable him to properly record, mix and master his own music. Being familiar with working with a band, he manages, promotes and books his own band. Since he works as a graphic designer for an American magazine, he does all the artwork and web design on his own too.
However, the utmost unique feature of Chance is his relationship to his fans. Both on his message board and beyond it, he stays in close touch with anyone who supports his music. These relationships go deeper than shallow small talk. "Percy's Song" testifies of this close bond. It is about a fan who has battled cancer for most of her life. She lives on the far end of the United States and has only physically met Chance twice.
Chance is one of the first musicians to achieve large-scale recognition through his involvement in podsafe music. Along with Brother Love and other musicians, his music has reached a large number of ears courtesy of the Podsafe Music Network, the podcasting community and renowned music web sites such as GarageBand.com. Along with other artists, Chance has contributed to the Podsafe for peace benefit project initiated by Adam Curry. On October 9, 2005, Chance became the first artist to start a simulcast podcast, which included over 30 podcasts around the world playing one of his live performances at The Gig in Los Angeles.
Strangely enough, Chance's most notable success is in the country of Qatar after he was discovered through GarageBand.com. The song "Say What You Will" quickly moved up the charts and has held the #1 spot for over three weeks, being more popular than for instance the Foo Fighters. The song "Man on a Mission" followed only weeks later and reached the #2 position in Qatar's charts. In August 2006, the song "Independent" reached the tenth spot.
