About — Chris McQueen

Photo by Fancois Bisi — *Photo by* *Fancois Bisi*

Chris McQueen has been playing, writing, and recording music since 1994. Along with Henry Hey he co-leads the explorative, groove-oriented instrumental band Forq, which has released five albums, and he has an acoustic guitar duo project with Matt Read that has released two albums. He is an original and current member of multi-Grammy winning band Snarky Puppy and Grammy-nominated world music group Bokanté. He has performed with Banda Magda, Lucy Woodward, Lizz Wright, Nikka Costa, Myron Butler & Levi, Alejandro Escovedo, and plays in the house band at Bruno Mars’ club The Pinky Ring in Las Vegas. He has been featured in several rock musicals, including David Bowie’s Lazarus at New York Theater Workshop (featuring Michael C. Hall) and The Rocky Horror Show at The Dallas Theater Center.

Chris grew up in Austin, TX and started playing guitar and recording songs on a 4-track Tascam around age 10. At 13 he played music with other people for the first time at The Natural Ear Music Camp. The director Michele Murphy recruited him to join the western swing kid band RedHeaded Stepchild, with whom he started gigging around Austin and learning how to solo from bandmate and guitar prodigy Will Knaak. This interest in improvisation led to a fascination with jazz; he joined and composed for the Westlake High School jazz band, and attended the University of North Texas to study with Fred Hamilton. In 2005-2006 he played in the One O’Clock Lab Band and wrote the piece “Foe Destroyer”, which was recorded for the band's Lab 2006 album.

Chris remained in the Dallas area for four years after college, co-leading the rock band Oso Closo with singer/songwriter Adrian Hulet, and studying music with Bernard Wright and other members of the Dallas R&B/jazz/Gospel scene. Oso Closo performed on stage in The Who’s Tommy at the Dallas Theater Center and released two albums. After Oso Closo broke up, Chris and fellow band member Danny Garcia joined with singer/songwriter Cade Sadler to form the rock band Foe Destroyer. Foe Destroyer created an eponymous album, toured for several years, and performed on stage in Dallas and NYC in the musical Fly By Night.

In recent years Chris has expanded beyond guitar playing to focus on music arranging, mobile app building, and video editing. He writes frequently for string quartet, big band, and horn/string sections. He co-arranged a piece on the Grammy-winning album Sylva by Snarky Puppy with the Metropole Orchestra. He has transcribed and engraved sheet music for Snarky Puppy, Bill Laurance, and his own groups, and he created arrangements and MainStage sounds for the musical Bunkerville. He has created two iPhone apps: Guitar Note Atlas, which helps guitar players visualize the guitar neck, and All Set for creating and sharing set lists. He makes educational-ish videos for his YouTube channel, and has edited and directed music videos for Forq, Read/McQueen guitar duo, Becca Stevens, and Ben Wendel.

Chris lives in Austin, TX with his wife Erin and their twin girls.

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