Chris Pierce recently released an important and timely song called “American Silence,” which is the title track from his new album released last month. “American Silence” already has had over 55,000 plays on Spotify and the video has been viewed more than 14,000 times.
“I felt like ‘American Silence’ was about adding to the collective greater voice of higher consciousness in general,” Pierce said, adding that the theme of the song is love and loving your neighbor. He said that he feels that complacency is kind of like an addiction. He said he felt like he needed to write a song to reach out to people who may have felt like they didn’t have the time or space in their lives to deal with things like inequality, justice and oppression.
Pierce said he had time to think about his past experiences and American history when the pandemic started last year. “Something kept coming back to me over and over again and that is I don’t make music just for people who agree with me. Even if folks agree with me about certain issues, maybe there’s a way though music to reach out to them in a way that will encourage folks to even dig deeper as far as some of the issues that affect us all and some of the things your neighbor might be going through that you’ve turned a blind eye to,” he said.
He didn’t know what would happen when the song was released, but people have been so interested in hearing not only his perspective but how I felt about the issues in general. “It feels so good to me that the songs are being heard,” he said.
“American Silence” isn’t the first time that Pierce has had success with his music. Pierce connected with another musician through a friend in 2007 or 2008 when he played the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas. That artist contacted him about ten years later when he was working on a new NBC show called This Is Us. Pierce had never heard of the show at the time, but the song went on to be featured three times on the show and it went on to be #1 on Billboard’s Blues chart.
Pierce said music was a big part of his house growing up and he started to gravitate toward music at a very early age, adding that everybody was full-steam ahead to make sure he had the access to things like instruments and lessons, which he described as a sacred thing to him. He was later asked to do the TV show Kids Incorporated.
Something happened around the time that Pierce was 15 that threatened his ability to be a singer. “I was diagnosed with a hereditary condition called otosclerosis, which is a deformation of the stapes bones, and eventually I couldn’t hear anything,” he said. While it was devestating, Pierce said that his family and the community was there again to help him. He said he was able to see some doctors, got diagnosed and was able to have surgery on one of his ears to regain partial hearing. “Thankfully I still have partial hearing in my right ear. The left one I’m still deaf in,” Pierce said.
Pierce knows that he’s not the same person as he would have been if he had not lost his hearing. “I have also found a place in my heart where I feel like I wouldn’t write the things I write, sing the way I sing or play the way I play if I had perfect hearing,” he said, adding that he wouldn’t communicate in the same way. “I learned to really look at it as a blessing, as deafness being a way to look deeper beyond the surface of things and beyond just the words that are right in front of me or the notes that right in front of me, to really reach in and lean in. The struggle ends up being a wonderful thing,” he said.
Pierce said it is kind of like riding a wave, being on the edge of your board, not knowing what was going to happen and knowing that you might fall off at some point. “You’re really just living every moment that you can. That’s what I do with every song,” he said.
“That’s what I do with every song,” Pierce said. “I know that I might not be hearing everything that coming out of the instruments or who’s on stage with me. Maybe there’s things that I’m not hearing in the audience, but I’m able to center myself and dig from a place within that really has no boundaries.”
Pierce went on to USC on the Ella Fitzgerald Scholarship. He was playing clubs and an artist named Seal saw him and gave him the opportunity to open for him on Seal’s world tour. Pierce said Seal and his band were so encouraging to him, adding that being a part of the tour was an amazing experience.
Pierce said he saw Seal sing his hit “Kiss From A Rose” all over the world night after night. “I was always amazed from the side stage at his vocal delivery, vocal power and its perfect pitch and how he delivered that song with such emotion every single night,” he said, adding that the song is “up there” in the range.
Pierce said the tour was his first time being overseas. He said being the opening act was a quick lesson on how to have a conversation. “As the opening act, it was a quick lesson how to have a conversation,” he said. “That’s how I started looking at my set as a 25 minute long conversation with folks I’m just meeting on the street, at the bar, at a restaurant, wherever.”
Part of that was singing the songs and presenting them in a way that would give the audience enough access to his heart and cause them to open their hearts to the song. “I study emotion and body language and facial expressions because I can’t hear folks a lot,” he said, adding that folks were singing along and clapping along by the third or fourth show. He said the crowds eventually started giving him a standing ovation.
Pierce said he has had the opportunity to talk to deaf students and he is looking forward to doing more of that. He said he has reached out to an organization in San Francisco and one in London about doing some visiting there when he is able to get back on the road. He said there is a school for the deaf a couple blocks from where he lives and he said that he has done some work with them over the years.