When I show up to the Model at 10PM, there’s a drag show going on. It’s that beautiful combination that happens every few years, when Marathon Monday falls on the same day as 4/20. I have been up since 6AM, having gone to take photos of the runners earlier in the day. Dimitri Christo is waiting for me at the end of the bar, armed with a smile and ready to talk about his newest solo release, Big Head & Other Bangers, a four track EP.
“Originally, I wasn’t going to promote it at all,” he tells me, a bit surprised that I had reached out to schedule the interview when he told me he was putting it out. We talk a bit about those first few rounds of solo albums as the Beatles were splitting up and the band members were trying to find their identities as individual artists, a special interest of mine. George Harrison sought songwriting freedom with the monumental triple album All Things Must Pass; Paul McCartney essentially invented indie rock with Ram; the other two had some decent stuff as well.
Christo plays in about five bands already, notably drums in Bus Crush and guitar in Gym Shorts. He’s more than handy with a few incidents, which makes him a popular asset to a lot of local bands. As suchan in demand instrumentalist, it must be hard for Christo to find time to write, record, and release his own music. But the EP finds the multi-instrumentalist crafting his own sound that still feels within the realm of his other bands while putting his own voice and perspective in the spotlight. “I feel like I’ve been playing music in bands and stuff for so long and being a part of scenes and projects with other people,” he explains. “It started to feel, um, a little draining, a little more draining than you’d want it to be.”
He’s still part of those other bands, mind you; this isn’t a quest for some personal liberation, but rather a need for another outlet where Christo gets to hold his own reins. If you saw him behind the kit with Bus Crush or cutting chops with Gym Shorts, then you wouldn’t get the full scope of his personality, and for that matter, his skill across a variety of instruments. “I don’t even consider myself a drummer, really,” he explains. “It’s not my first instrument.” He plays every single instrument on Big Head, for the record.
The other side effect of playing instruments in other bands is that audiences rarely get a chance to hear your voice. Christo talks about the self-consciousness behind not really being a vocalist but stepping in front of the mic regardless. “I’ve been making this music the whole time anyway,” he explains, “as a byproduct of being in bands and just writing songs and honing the craft and kind of studying and getting influenced by whatever I’m listening to at any particular time. Then you end up with this backlog of– at this point it’s like going on, going on hundreds of like songs in my like Google Drive that are either half-finished or like fully-finished.”
For Christo, the writing and recording process is more akin to keeping a diary than it is to a big career move, a method of self-documentation and reflection “That mentality,” he says, “paired with the understanding of – apart from any commercial success or, or lack thereof – music is going to continue to be a huge cornerstone of my life forever. So why not just start documenting it by putting it out as I go and kind of having this musical diary. And as long as that’s just like for fun without an agenda, then it just becomes kind of like this time capsule where I get to look back in 50 years or something and see what music I was making at whatever point in time.” The Big Head EP is also a playground for some of Christo’s loose ideas, creative quirks, and musical fascinations. “I really like when something happens in a song, when the best part of a song happens one time,” he says. To me that’s kind of like a weird North Star.”
While peer feedback is vitally important when putting together any kind of art, sometimes it is just as vital to do something more personal. You stop playing to other people’s taste. “You’re not looking to anyone else for any sort of decision making or guidance,” Christo says.”I’m playing every instrument and like doing all the mixing and engineering and stuff for better or for worse.” Operating in this silo allows Christo to play around with less inhibition and more acceptance of ideas that might seem silly to bring to a band. “What if I lean into that instead of running from it? The song ‘Big Head’ is a song about a guy who’s got too big a head.”
Compared to that title track’s very on-the-nose imagery, there are songs on the EP that plumb Christo’s personal life. “‘Running Out’ is a song about a best or like what used to be like a best friend of mine turned kind of like nemesis, unfortunately,” he says, a relatable predicament. Without getting specific, he gets personal. “This is somebody y who I’ve have known since first grade,” he explains, citing a strained relationship with a childhood friend that eventually Christo had to bring to a close. Breaking it off with a partner is one type of pain, but it is arguably harder to do the same with these types of friends. You want to keep believing in the goodness that you see in them. Writing the song helped Christo process this struggle. “That was kind of a cathartic experience for me,” he says, “to be like, I am gonna actually put all this kind of like frustration and disappointment and feelings of the love is running out – quite literally – into something that can be expelled into the world, a sign sealed fucking kiss.”
After two rounds of Modelo at the bar, the drag queens have packed up in the Model’s other room. With the room to ourselves, I get Dimitri to dance.
Stream Big Head & Other Bangers by Dimitri Christo now on all services, and be sure to see Dimitri Christo & Friends play at State Park on May 31st at an Allston Pudding show.