Christopher Kent — a Patton Township resident who is six feet, five inches tall — is sort of invisible.
He is a lifelong musical performer who has made few public appearances since moving here — becoming mainly a “digital performer.” His original songs — many of which are currently on three albums plus singles — can be heard anytime on his website.
But the soft-spoken, mild-mannered Kent has now reached two public high notes in his life: he’s composed his 150th song, and two he recorded here have been picked as international-competition finalists, placing him among more than 100 finalists out of an entrant field of 250,000.
In the Best Holiday Recording category (one of 70 categories) are his “Songs of the Season” (with State College Choral Society members singing backup) and “’Twas the day of Thanksgiving.” JPF (Just Plain Folks) is the sponsor. The grassroots organization of some 50,000 members is in 160 countries; its competition has been held every five of its approximately 20 years.
Anyone attending last year’s Memorial Day concert at the Boal Mansion in Boalsburg and/or the autumn crawly entomological Great Insect Fair on the Penn State campus heard Kent’s high baritone voice and his guitar strumming.
If not, there’s always www.christopherkent.com. Downloading occurs “all over the world — Australia, Russia, England, China,” Kent says.
His stuff tends to be conversational, thought-provoking, funny, all of the above.
Fifteen years ago, the writer/editor and composer/musician (two-sided, like an old vinyl record) moved with his wife, Lynn Yost, from an apartment in Manhattan (via a stint in Bucks County) to a small house in Patton Township near Haugh’s Woods. A cousin in Pennsylvania Furnace was the magnet.
(Family connections have led to many a Centre County residency. New older residents have been known to follow kids, grandkids.)
The couple is thrilled to be close to nature, as proved by his “Backyard Bird TV.” A poem fragment reads:
“A wise man once said, the best entertainment comes for free/
And so it does; we love to watch our Backyard Bird TV.”
Being “pretty much equi-distant between New York, Philadelphia and Washington” allows visits to friends there. “Because of Penn State, I actually know more international people here than in New York,” Kent says. Easily accessible are the many friends around here and, down the road, he can get a song he doesn’t produce himself done in Stomstown at Bill Filer’s Audible Images studio.
Local instrumentalists have been recording regulars: J.T Thompson, piano; Jack Wilkinson and Kevin Lowe, drums; Andrew Jackson, percussion; Steve Bowman, sax; Pete Jogo, bass.
Kent, a Pennsylvania native from Morrisville, had lived in New York for 20 years. His most recent employment was by trade magazines based in New York City and Philadelphia.
While permitting him to relocate here, his boss kept him on as senior editor of a professional ophthamology magazine; Kent specializes in glaucoma articles. (Working in her own office area, his somewhat shorter, ebullient wife is a sometime long-distance editor and creative director — and her husband’s photographer.)
Along the way, musically (prior to State College gigs at the Arts Festival and Webster’s) he serenaded in grungy bars, won the major music publishers’ 1976 New York Songwriters Competition, opened a concert for Janice Ian and other artists, was a musical representative for the New York City Parks Department, gave a series of songwriting lectures at a downtown Philadelphia Barnes & Noble superstore, taught 300 students over five years in an NYC “University Without Walls” songwriting course.
“If you want to get a subject, teach it,” Kent says. “I’m a better songwriter because of teaching other people.” His book Songwriting Demystifyed, based on his course then, is being worked on now.
Not a sprouting athlete as a boy, Kent got a solid introduction to music between the ages of 10 and 14 with the Princeton, New Jersey-based American Boychoir. Touring in North America, Europe and Japan gave him got a taste of stage performance, of audience aproval. Kent taught himself to play the guitar at George School, a Quaker high school near Morrisville, and as an undergraduate at Haverford College outside Philadelphia.
A psychology major, he’s had a lifelong interest in human behavior, which comes across in many essays, poems and songs. “I’ve wanted to help the world since I was a kid,” he says.
“Piece of the Puzzle,” possibly his most popular song, is prefaced by:
“Sometimes life is like a puzzle, where the pieces don’t fit
And you need a little help to make sense of it
Then someone says something that cuts right through the mess
In 25 words or less . . . .”
It begins:
“Einstein said knowledge is less important than imagination
Mark Twain said he never let the stuff he learned in school interfere with his education
The Dalai Lama said, sometimes not getting what you want works best of all
Dolly Parton said if you want the rainbow, you’ve got to put up with the rainfall . . . ”
Verses continue. The chorus is:
“Everybody’s got a piece of the puzzle
Everybody’s learned a thing or two
Good times, hard times, you never know when you’ll find
Another piece of the puzzle waiting for you”
Kent wrote a related book, Staying Off the Wheel of Misfortune, and is finishing a sequel.
One time of year flows into another. He’s working on bringing out an original collection of Christmas songs, including “Songs of the Season,” and is looking toward August, which will bring competition results and — if he wins — a memorable birthday.
