Christian Hansen’s Biography
                                   

Full Name: Christian Kornerup Hansen

Date of Birth: August 8, 1962

Place of Birth: Sønderborg, Denmark

Citizenship: US

Current Residence: Spokane, WA, US

Music Training: Classical Guitar

Formal Education: MS, PhD, Technical University of Denmark

Instruments: Guitars, Keyboards, Vocal

Previous Bands: Watt 99, Peach Melba, Bikini Band

I grew up in the suburbs of Copenhagen, Denmark, the youngest of three children. I started playing guitar at the age of 11  inspired by my older brother Axel and sister Ida, who both played guitar and heavily influenced by the music they listened to, bands like the Beatles, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Rolling Stones, Deep Purple, Doors and Procol Harum. My brother and sister taught me my first few chords and my sister let me borrow an older acoustic guitar of hers. Soon my brother and I were jamming in the basement and my brother, sister and I made a cassette tape with our music as a Christmas gift to our parents. In 1974 I met Henrik Lisby who like me was learning to play guitar and we immediately became friends. Henrik had been engaged in music since an early age as a member of the Danish Radio Drengekor (National Public Radio Boys Choir) directed by legendary Henning Elbirk with whom he had already traveled around the world. Henrik and I would get together frequently to jam at his house. I would play my sister's acoustic guitar and he would play his dad’s old jazz guitar and we even began writing our first songs together (very primitive songs – usually over two or three chords and with equally primitive lyrics in the limited English that we knew at the time). Henrik made good money from performing with other boys from the Boys Choir in minor roles in various plays with the Royal Danish Theater Company, more than enough to soon buy a brand new guitar and amp, while I delivered newspapers and saved up for months to buy my first electric guitar, an old beat up Egmont strat copy from a pawn store.

At the private school (Bordings Friskole) I attended, I often would bring my sister’s acoustic guitar to school and play for my classmates during recess. The picture above is from a party in 1974, during which my brother Axel and I performed to a dancing crowd of class mates. In 1976, one of our school's music teachers took the first step towards forming a school rock band. That brought together Peter Silfvander, a 7^th grader on drums, myself an 8^th grader on guitar and Jørgen Thorup, a 10^th grader on bass to form the band Watt 99 (see picture left). After our first rehearsal in the school’s gym, we moved our rehearsals to Peter’s basement and we quickly added a second guitar player, my friend Henrik who by coincidence also knew Jørgen from the Boys Choir. A few month later we performed our first gig at the school’s Christmas party and again later in March 1977 at another school party. The band was quite popular in our school and we were treated like little celebrities. We practiced weekly and improved significantly during the next year or so, but never succeeded in playing any gigs outside our own school. In the fall of 1977, Jørgen Thorup left the band to pursue other bands and eventually a career as a very successful professional musician.  Without Jørgen Watt 99 lost its momentum.  For a short period Polixigis Hauptman, a classmate and friend of mine who had generously loaned us his guitar amp for our gigs, replaced Thorup on bass, but eventually Henrik Lisby decided to give up the guitar in favor of the bass, and began taking serious bass guitar lessons. Watt 99 continued to exist until about 1980 with little success and with various musicians coming and going, including two Yugoslavian immigrants, Slavik on guitar and another follow on keyboards whose name I don't remember. During the years 1978-1981 I attended the very music oriented High School Aurehøj, through which I was involved in a number of other music projects.   Aurehøj was known for its rich music life and was one of only a few high schools in Denmark with music education formally blended into the curriculum.  The school had a rich selection of instruments and amps, and students were issued keys to use the music classroom after school hours and on weekends. There were always plenty of music projects available to join and at least once a year the school had a week long theme week (usually a theme that fueled a series of musical performances and other artistic creations). In 1979 I played bass guitar in a 4-piece band for the musical Godspell joined by musicians, Søren Michaelsen (guitar), Mads Thor Madsen (drums) and Jacob Viggo (Piano), see picture left (me in the middle with the "Brian May" inspired hairstyle).  Henrik Lisby, who also attended Aurehoj, and I both played in the High School Jazz Ensemble and in a school project Det Frie Menneske (A Free Man) we performed one of my compositions with Mads Thor Madsen (Drums) and Ian Brodersen (Keyboards), see picture below.   It was also during that time I started taking private classical guitar lessons from instructor Henrik Vissing and I performed at the annual School Spring Concert in duet with my classmate, Ian Brodersen.

The 70' was by far the decade during which I grew the most as a musician. I went from playing three chords towards becoming a sophisticated classical guitarist and playing a variety a genres ranging from rock music to jazz. 

The 80’s – The Creative Years

After graduation in 1981, I spent 5 months in the US visiting my dad's cousin in Cedar Falls, IA. After returning to Denmark I worked in an auto detail shop for 7 months before I started college in the Fall of 1982. During that time I continued to take classical guitar lessons. I found that playing classical music is an extremely satisfying challenge during the first few years because your progess is so evident. Besides, it helped improve my technique on my electrical guitar tremendously. However after about 4 years I seemed to have reached a plateau where I would have had to make classical music my primary focus in order to advance to the next level. My priorities were somewhere else. I love classical music, however, to me it is missing the component of music where my biggest passion is - the improvisional and spontaneous part.  In 1982 I again hooked up with Henrik Lisby, who had spent a year as an exchange student at Loyola University in New Orleans. Together with Mads Thor Madsen, our drummer from Aurehoj and a mutual friend, Joachim Rosenstand on keyboards we formed the band Peach Melba. Nobody in the band had much interest in playing gigs, rather our focus was on developing and recording new original material. We set up a primitive recording studio featuring a four-track real-to-real tape recorder, a 12 channel mixer board, two microphones and a Roland digital delay unit in a small room we rented in the center of the city bicycle racing ring. Lisby and I, who wrote most of the songs, both had strong opinions about how every instrument should be played and sound, something that was not always appreciated by Madsen, who left the band within the first year. The band now reduced to three members became Bikini Band with a Yamaha Drum Machine leading the rhythm section. The name of the band, a bizarre name considering that the band was made up entirely of straight male members was named after our song Danser I Bikini På Filini (Dancing in Bikini at Filini) a song with silly Danish lyrics about the nightlife in Copenhagen in clubs and cafes such as Filini. That song was composed by the entire band and became our signature tune.

The 90’s – The Quiet Years

In 1991, I finished my Ph.D. in Statistics, got married, left Denmark and took a job in Washington DC as an engineer doing research and development in the communications satellite organization INTELSAT. In 1993 I moved to Spokane, WA and became a math professor at Eastern Washington University (EWU). So what has that got to do with my music biography? Nothing …, and that was characteristic of most of what I did related to music in the 90s. Between starting a family, writing publications to earn tenure, buying my first house and coaching soccer, there was little time left to be creative with music. At EWU I became friends with my faculty colleague David Goering, a talented keyboard player, who like me had been active in music for many years but now was focusing on family, work and other things. Dave and I got together occasionally to jam (usually with just an acoustic piano and guitar). I did play my acoustic guitar frequently, and I also had my keyboard and electric guitar set up in my basement, but I never wrote a single song during the 90’s.

So for the 90s - It was an important time for me personally during time which I built a successful career, raised a wonderful son and bought my first -house and Mercedes-Benz, but music-wise the 90s was the most quiet decade for me.

The 00’s – The Revival

In 2001 approaching the age of 40, I had taken my professional career (outside of music) about as far as I could. In the early part of this decade I went through a difficult period in my life going through a painful divorce and trying to find myself again. As painful as it was, it led to some good changes in my life. In 2003 I was invited to come and jam with a couple of buddies, Guitarist Dan Scanlan and Bass Player Erick Keating, who both worked at Eastern. They introduced me to Drummer Dan Johnson (DJ), a music veteran who had played in various bands for over 40 years. That first night we were jamming in DJ's basement I realized how much I had missed playing in a band. Also, I discovered that DJ was not only a steady  drummer, but also a fantastic singer, by far the best I have worked with in my 30 years of playing. Keating had played the trumpet for years and had recently picked up the bass and was developing rapidly. I met with these guys regularly every Thursday night, and I mostly played piano. Thursday nights were a lot of fun, but after a few months of jamming it became clear that not everyone was in agreement about what we were working towards.  Friction built and soon the musical relationship ended. Around June 2004 DJ invited Keating and I to come and jam with his old friend Robbin Ball, a guitarist from DJ's former band Bad Influence and he and a few other musicians joined us for a jam session at Ball's house in Coeur d'Alene, ID. I responded by inviting DJ and Keating to a 4th of July BBQ and jam session at my house and I also invited  my friend David Goering to join us. Now all the pieces fell together natuarlly. Our Thursday night rehearsals were revived and we were now formally a band. We performed our first gig under the name Three Nerds and a Doctor, at a benefits concert sharing the stage with DJ's friend and Spokane Elvis impersonator Ben "Presley" Klein and his Rockabillies at a strip mall outside a coffee shop owned by the Johnson's at the time. Later that fall we performed for the first time as Powerstrip at an Alumni Dinner at Eastern Washington University. Powerstrip has since then performed at numerous venues around Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho, see our recent gigs list. In December 2004 I met the new woman in my life, now wife Kelly. She was the first woman I have been with that expressed a genuine interest in my music and she gave me the inspiration to rediscover the creative side of me and to start writing songs again. My first composition in over 15 years was Cruising with Kelly, a Dave Grusin inspired instrumental tune dedicated to Kelly and my 1976 Mercedes convertible. Also in December 2004, most of the members of Powerstrip participated in a jam session in Hayden Lake, ID which introduced me to  a large number of local musicians including the German native bass player Roxy McDaniel from Lockdown, my all time favorite local Spokane band. I took Kelly out see Lockdown on our first date at the former Brix in Coeur d'Alene, ID. That evening the Lockdown keyboard player did not show up for the gig and Roxy came to our table, handed me a set list and asked if I could help them out on the keyboards. Being on my first date with Kelly and with the prospect of playing a set of songs half of which that I had never played before on a Ensonic synth that I was not familiar with, I politely declined, but I was honored to have been given the offer. About a year later, however, I was able to help out Lockdown, when Roxy called me with short notice to ask if Powerstrip would cover for them on a gig they could not play because their sax player was sick. That gave Powerstrip a chance to play at O'Shays in Coeur D'Alene for a crowd expecting to see Lockdown, however I am pleased to say that we were very well received by the audience.

In December 2006, when Powerstrip was invited to play at the annual Christmas party for Bonneville Power Administration held at Spokane's Ella's Supper Club, we added a nice twist to our show, by introducing our new band Wintery Mix featuring the same Powerstrip members, but on all acoustic instruments: Dan Johnson on flute, Erick Keating on baritone, David Goering on piano and myself on acoustic guitar. Wintery Mix "opened" for Powerstrip with a set of Christmas carols. An "encore" performance was given for the December 2007 BPA Christmas party.

In July 2008, Kelly and I were married in the backyard of our house in front of a party of 90+ people including most of my relatives from Denmark. I was proud to have my nephew Nicolai Kornerup (Mames Babegenush) perform at the wedding ceremony and reception including accompanying me on piano on my song You Took My Breath Away that I wrote for Kelly and performed for the first time during the ceremony. Powerstrip also played at the reception with Robbin Ball sitting in as guest guitar player. Nicolai's amazing klezmer tunes played solo on his accordian drew an applause from the entire neighborhood.

So far the 00's have been good to me musicwise. I definitely have played more gigs in the 00's than I have in my previous 3 decades af playing and I feel blessed having the means to play the best instruments and gear that I could only dream of back when I started playing some 35 years ago.   

The Future

I anticipate that Powerstrip will continue to play in the same member configuration for many years to come. As a band we work so well together, not just musically, but also socially. It greatly helps that we are all friends and that have found a balance between being serious at what we are doing and having lots of fun at the same time. I believe it is a strength that we all have careers outside of music and that we don't rely on income from playing to be able to buy the equipment we need or to pay our bills. Lately, we have had no shortage of opportunities to play gigs, but we can be selective and we play only venues where we believe that we can give both ourselves and the audience a good time. We also limit the number of gigs we play so that we don't get burned out or interfere with our commitments to family and other priorities.

In the almost 4 years we have played together we have grown a lot. We have gone from jamming primitive three-chord blues to tunes to playing some rather sophisticated jazzy tunes, such as the Dave Weckl tune 101 Shuffle which took us literally months before we nailed it. We have some of the greatest variety of any cover band I have seen, yet it all fits beautifully together. I can't remember playing for any crowd hat was not excited about at least some of our songs. We will continue to add new songs and continue to challenge ourselves. We have started to add some original tunes, and I would like to see us eventually develop at least one set of original music, which would open the door for us the play some venues that only book original bands.  

Meanwhile, I am continuing to develop my own recording studio in the basement of my house and I plan to devote more time write and record new material. Henrik Lisby and I who have remained friends through almost 35 years are picking up where we left off about 15 years ago and we have plans to re-record some of our old songs as well as new material through our "virtual studio" in which we will be recording with 10,000 miles between us made possible through a high-speed internet connection. Don't you love technology? 

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Last modified: 8/5/08