Image via YouTube
Sometimes it boils down to the difference between show business and real life. For nearly 25 years and over 1500 performances Chris Tishler, per his nom de rocke Cesar Palace, fronted Milwaukee’s 5 Card Studs at gigs that ranged from outdoor festivals to wedding receptions to corporate Christmas parties. When we tried to connect for this story Tishler was busy grocery shopping for his Mom during the pandemic.
Tishler’s musical resume is lengthy and impressive, including Johnny and the Losers, Mother’s Room, Wheelie, Animal Magnets and CHIEF in addition to the Studs. With JAL, Tishler’s rough vocals anchored that trio’s sound, a sound that pointed back to classic rock as much as then-current alt rock tastes. His Rickenbacker bass added to the impression.
In successive groups he switched to guitar; in Animal Magnets his guitar playing was part of that band’s swagger.
With CHIEF, Tishler gave free reign to his rock and roll id. The hard rock power trio’s Soundcloud page includes the tongue in cheek description “The Greatest Rock Band in The World.” But it accurately describes Tishler, bassist Dave Benton and drummer Matt Liban’s nods to Thin Lizzy, Judas Priest, the Scorpions, UFO, Halen, Saxon, Iron Maiden and Grand Funk Never shy about influences, one Chill on the Hill performance at Bay View’s Humboldt Park saw the group donning kimonos ala vintage Rush.
Formed as something of a lark, the 5 Card Studs deliver a loungey take on disco, AM radio classics and long-gone soul hits, with Tishler/Palace using Tom Jones as a starting point for the persona. In December of the year when everything changed, a post on the group’s Facebook page announced Palace had left the building.
Tishler recently spoke candidly about weathering the pandemic, gratitude and how when one door closes another one opens.
How has the lockdown affected your creativity?
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To be honest, and this will sound like kind of a buzzkill, but I didn't do much musically. I’m still not sure if it was because I became lazy or just needed a breather, but I'm leaning towards the latter.
On the original music front, I’d already recorded a solo record over the course of 2019. We were finishing up the CHIEF double album, The Galleon in the later part of that year as well, so going into the lockdown I’d already had quite a bit happening.
The cover band I was in would regularly do about 100 gigs a year on top of that, so once the lockdown hit, I finally found a minute to sit and relax, catch up on making my visual art and just enjoy “being a civilian,” as it were.
Do you have a routine or schedule for staying in practice or working on new material?
Bluntly, no. The only routine I had prior to the pandemic was weekly practices with the cover band and those gigs, too. I’ve never really had a routine to sit and practice specifically.
When I’m creative musically it usually comes in spurts, so if I’ve got something brewing, I’ll just run with it. Sometimes that can be a short period of time, other times that can be months. If there’s not really anything popping in my head musically, I’ve never tended to sit down with a set schedule and try to come up with something. I’ve tried that previously and at least with me, the results can sound forced or just sub-par.
Are you making plans for when you can resume playing in front of people again?
Semi-actively making plans, I guess, yes. Don’t get me wrong, I love playing gigs and I love being onstage. But when I see musicians with crying emojis and whatnot mentioning how they miss playing live so much, I’ve been tending to disagree with that.
I probably sound like the odd man out, but having done it so much in the capacity in which I did (being a kind of ring leader/front man doing the schtick and making sure people were having a good time, all the time), it forced me to take a bit of a break from that. It has been really nice.
I’m taking it slowly. Live music is in a weird state at present. A lot of it is a necessary evil due to COVID-19, but some of the ways in which live music is presented under current circumstances (livestreams, etc.) are things I’m not too interested in doing.
Not that things will ever necessarily be as they used to be, but I’m OK with waiting until a gig is a bit more like a gig. Also, when/if I play out again, it’s going to be on my own terms (as me and not some “character” onstage), at my own pace, it’s going to be fun and I’m going to do my damnedest to make sure it’s as kick ass as it can be.
The "demise" of CHIEF
CHIEF recorded our last album, The Galleon, over the end of 2019. We'd had somewhat of a feeling, I think, that it might be the last record, at least for a while, but nothing was really spoken about that.
Dave (bassist Dave Benton) and I had started writing stuff for it back in 2014 and it had been an actively ongoing process since then. We started writing tunes and were coming up with these huge, grandiose ideas for it: doing the album release on a tall ship; making a stage set of a life-sized hull; etc., but we didn't think that we'd indeed be recording a double LP until we had it all in place and realized that we'd written a concept album.
Once we played through all of the pieces and then played them as they should be heard --15 songs, all linked together with no breaks, making one "song" a little over an hour long -- we knew that we had to follow through and see it to fruition.
It proved to be a little more daunting than we'd imagined. Not saying that it was the album that killed the band, but it definitely put us in a coma. CHIEF is one of those bands that doesn't ever really break up or die or whatever, though.
We'd taken a couple years break before, then next thing we knew we were together again for five or six years, gigging and recording another record, CHIEF II. I do know that Dave and I will play music together regardless, whether it's as CHIEF or something else, who knows? We never seem to ourselves, so...
Leaving the 5 Card Studs
There are almost too many factors to mention about why I left that band. I'd tried to leave it two or three times before and had always either convinced myself or had gotten convinced by someone in it that it was a good idea to stay with it.
Any personal differences aside which may have contributed to it, it all just took a toll on me and on my personal life. I'd give every gig my all, many times to my own detriment physically and especially mentally. It got harder and harder to keep up the "character" onstage that I was known for and expected to be when we played.
Others could kick back and play the music, no matter what mood they were in or how they're feeling that night or whatever. I never had that luxury and had to be "on" all the time. That gets old and after a while I started feeling like a clown as opposed to a performer.
Also, many times, for years, most times I prioritized the band and all I had to do with it and for it, over things and people in my personal life that should've been top priorities. I let myself get caught up in a lot of the crap that goes along with being in a popular band (too much booze, late nights), contributing to broken relationships, not spending enough time with my family and just a lot of negative aspects of my life that I needed to get away from all of that to correct.
Long and short of it, after having a bit of a forced break because of the lockdown, I could actually have time away from it to not be immersed in the inertia of it all, catch up on some much needed rest, be ME and just think.
About a month into the lockdown it came to a head for me. One of the cancelled-due-to-COVID bookings that we had was rescheduled. I saw a notification about the rescheduled date one morning on my phone and I had a bit of a breakdown. I knew that was the final call to just move on from it.
I had many years of great times and great shows with those guys and I'd like to think that we were pretty good at what we did. I was in the 5 Card Studs for going on 25 years, all the same members the whole time, and it might be "just" a cover band, but I'm really proud of what that incarnation of the band was and has accomplished.
