Backstage with Christian Lee Hutson

You wouldn’t expect Elliot Smith to crack a joke at his show. Nor Bright Eyes; Phoebe Bridgers maybe. Christian Lee Hutson stands out from fellow masters in the sad song indie-verse in this way. Before his recent show in Philadelphia, which was part off-the-cuff stand up and part acoustic string duo, I had the opportunity to ask Hutson about his sense of humor, which he credits to his parents and also idols John Prine and Randy Newman. “I love people who acknowledge how strange and hard life can be while also laughing at it and not taking it as seriously.”

On stage at PhilaMOCA on January 31st, Christian Lee Hutson played a show unlike the other four times I’d seen him play Philly (a few are documented here at xpn.org, like his Free At Noon performance and his split bill with Fenne Lily at Union Transfer.) This time was stripped down, just Hutson on the acoustic guitar and singer-songwriter Odessa on violin. A map displaying a fantasy land of Hutson song-lore destinations was projected on screen behind them, and a craftsmen style table lamp between them.

Hutson breaked for generous lengths between songs to poll the audience or setup a new song. Before “After Hours,” a song from his latest Paradise Pop. 10, Hutson told us about the night before he wrote the song, in which he got so high he couldn’t remember if he had already took a puff of his weed pen, and started imagining what heaven looked like. In the song he sings  “there’s a Diet Coke fountain, no good Italian / There’s free shuffleboard in the main hall / Big budget productions of the lives of your loved ones / The good stuff is behind a paywall.”

Hutson grew up in Santa Monica, California, a town he resented for not being extraordinary enough to fulfill his dream of becoming a novelist. “No novelist grows up in Santa Monica,” he says, though he’s put his storytelling talent to good use in his songwriting. I could feel him wince when I presumed his latest record had “strong break-up album vibes,” because his narratives, I learned, are not always biographical. In Paradise Pop. 10‘s opening track “Tiger,” he sings from the first perspective about following a lover to San Francisco, then moving back home after her career took off without him. “Every song is probably like, 30% autobiographical, 30% other people’s biography, and 40% fiction.”

Christian Lee Hutson | photo by Paige Walter for WXPN

The most striking connection to his personal life he revealed in our chat is his obsession with the ABC show Modern Family. “I’ve watched [Modern Family] over and over again for like seven years. It takes place in the neighborhood I grew up in.” A neighborhood that has notably seen devastation in the days of the Palisades-area fires in Los Angeles. Reflecting on the tragedy, Hutson says his perspective of his hometown changed, naturally. “It made me love the place I grew up in.”

Now, Hutson lives in New York City, and is a central figure in a community of artists who like himself, didn’t grow up there. “I don’t know how many people would consider themselves ‘New York bands.’ Most people I know in New York are like, ‘we happen to be living here now.'” But among those bands, he’s a big champion of Allegra Krieger, his tourmate who performed an enchantingly off-kilter opening set. And, it goes without saying, he’s also a fan of Maya Hawke, the actress, singer-songwriter and Hutson’s partner, who joined the stage to debut a new song the pair were workshopping.

Before ending the night, Hutson proclaimed “we’re taking a political stance against encores,” which meant they wouldn’t do the old song and dance of feigning to leave when they had more to play. For the record, this is a policy I’d vote for.

Christian Lee Hutson wraps up tour with concerts this weekend at San Francisco’s Swedish American Hall (Friday, February 21st) and The Troubadour in West Hollywood (Saturday, February 22nd). His next batch of shows centers around a gig at the Parque da Cidade do Porto festival in Portugal on June 12th; full dates here.