Chris Roberts: The Hatter
photo credit: Kimberly Hunt
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As a teen, Chris Roberts was a prominent fixture on the Texas baseball fields, drawing the eyes of more than one pro scout. Then, in August of 1999, he joined a few friends on a road trip to Colorado’s Buttermilk Mountain to see Widespread Panic at the Aspen Harmony Festival. Roberts, reared on Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Bob Marley, experienced a jamband epiphany.
“I thought, ‘Wow! This happens?’ It was rock-and-roll. It was Southern—the crowd was awesome. I’d never seen anything like that in my life,” Roberts recalls. “That was when I basically decided to quit baseball and buy a guitar.”
Roberts picked up the instrument in his early twenties, writing songs while working odd jobs at construction sites, car washes and ranches. Eventually, he relocated from Austin to Aspen, hung out a shingle as a hatmaker—using The Aspen Hatter handle—and continued to develop as a musician. “All of my writing is built on emotions; things I’ve felt,” he says. “I’m telling these stories from different points of view, from different parts of life.”
Early last year, Roberts’ career accelerated. He held auditions in Los Angeles for his touring band and hit the road in the opening months of 2020, starting in the Lone Star State. Then, COVID struck, and the ensemble quickly found themselves playing venues with more people sanitizing seats than sitting in them. Roberts called an audible, kept the band together and pointed the tour bus to Joshua Tree, Calif.’s Skylab Studio.
Holed up in isolation, the group wrote and recorded Roberts’ EP, Red Feather. The five-song set opens with “Get Down,” a chicken[1]fried boogie that chronicles those insulated days. “I was staring out the window, and I thought, ‘I’ve got to say something,’” he remembers. “I saw a jackrabbit bouncing through the desert and I was like, ‘That’s how I feel. I’m going to get on with the get down.’” “Get Down” follows two earlier singles from the extended player; “Remember That It’s Me” even made waves on several Texas charts. While quarantined, Roberts worked daily on new material—adding piano to his skillset— and is eager to return to the stage. “It’s fun, when rock-and-roll is happening, to grab the mic and sing,” Roberts says. “I can’t slow this train down.”
