Born in a shitty West Texas town in 1985, Chelsea Candra Schmid is no stranger to innovation. "You have to be creative to entertain yourself round here, where all there is to do is drink beer, have sex and listen to the radio." Growing up in a place affectionately known by residents as M-town (hell, to lifers)Chelsea found her best friends at an early age in a hot pink radio--prized Christmas possession that would prove to be a sufficient occupant of the mind even after its death circa 1999, when she and her brother deconstructed the device for a better look at its components--and a spiral notebook with clean, college-ruled pages. Yes, companionship flowed from the tip of her pen like the vomit from that guys mouth after a night of heavy boozing. But let's back up a bit. For Chelsea, and for many other pre-adolescents, teens and college-aged kids, music proved to be an inextricable part of the soul. A part in fact so significant it dictated much of her rearing and shaped the person she is today. "I was raised on music. My mom is like the biggest rock and roll fan ever. We grew up listening to the Beatles, Led Zepplin, Pink Floyd, The Eagles, Tom Petty--everybody. When I was younger, it was pretty much all oldies, stuff from the '70s and '80s, but with the influence of my older brother's heavy metal, and my becoming a live music socialite, I found true love in the umbrella genre of rock and roll." Chelsea was one of those kids with the loud music and the band tees, the ones who had cut-out pictures of their favorite rockers plastered to the walls from Hit Parader, the one that knew every bit of random Nirvana trivia one could dish and more. She attended live shows at the local all ages dive, always knew the band, and never went a minute with music playing in the background. It was a source of inspiration, an outlet, the epitome of emotion expressed, and she held it dearly as she struggled through the troubled teens. But music wasn't the only consolation, having discovered a gift in the way of diction, Chelsea spent a great deal of her time composing short stories, talking to herself, and putting in print the inane ideas that she kept locked in treasure chests deep in the alcoves of her mind. "I was very secretive at first. I never wanted anybody to read the stuff I'd written, for fear of judgement. The early stuff was very morbid, and I think that's a reflection on my mental state; it sucked being 14. But as I matured and developed more fully into a writer, so my work began to be a source of great pride for me. Nowadays, I pretty much force-feed friends and family articles and fiction pieces when they are completed, and I've often had friends request that I write something for them or that I bring them something they can ponder." Sometime about seven years ago, Chelsea put herself in glass case and set it on the shelf. The music was gone, she'd been convinced that her passion for it only hindered the reality that she needed to go to school, she needed to be concerned with what the future would hold, and she needed to drop the dream. She wasn't sure then what that dream was at the time, she knew her talent but she hadn't realized it, and it wouldn't be till December 2006 when she would discover passion to be the meaning of life. "I'd dropped out of the music scene for about five years and really lost touch with everything that revolved around it. I quit going to shows, I didn't listen to the radio and I didn't like new music, it was just awful. One day an old friend needed a ride to a Buckcherry show in San Angelo. That day changed my life forever. Prior to this I had gone through 3 different colleges and universities, had changed my major a ridiculous number of times (although I had finally settled on Creative Writing) and I was really just at a point where i wanted to go in the right direction. I was ready to take off in life and fly where time chose to take me." The plan was faulty. She made a good captain, but the damned navigation system seemed to be broken and it gave commands in German rather than the eloquent English she fluently spoke. She was just waiting for something big, for autopilot to kick in and the air traffic controller to come on and say in a monotone Ben Stein voice "you are here." Choosing to be a part of the show rather than sit and read the John Grisham book she'd brought along for the trip, Chelsea helped her buddy and the stage hands build the production for Buckcherry that night. When she'd agreed to cheuffer the friend to the gig, she didn't know who the band was. She'd heard the name, but she wasn't aware that these guys did that "Crazy Bitch" song, that they were in fact a big deal. "I spent most of that day just bullshitting with Keith (Nelson), their guitar player. He had his guitar taken all apart, there were guitar guts everywhere, and we just talked all day. By the end of the show we were chums and I was hooked. I helped the guys load out and got the bosses number and began doing shows on the weekends as a stagehand. It really just snowballed from there." And those were some big balls. Within months it would cause an avalanche, resulting in yet another changed major, an exciting new job, and a re-discovery of everything she loved in life. Perhaps a month and a half later, Chelsea worked the X Fest show in Lubbock, where Buckcherry, Papa Roach, Hinder, Puddle of Mud, Smile Empty Soul, and countless others played. Here she ran into Keith again, and this time there would be no going back. "I asked him if he remembered me, and he responded yeah, you're the girl that got sprayed by the skunk(refer to xfest blog for more on this story) and I let it go. I wasn't going to remind him of that dark and chilly day in the San Angelo Graham Central Station. He wandered off to talk to Jacoby of Papa Roach, but came back moments later stating 'I do remember you. I met you that day I had my guitar all taken apart...you're majoring in like Journalism or something.' That was all it took. I corrected him of course, it was creative writing, but from that point on I determined it should be Journalism. This guy is in one of the better known bands of his genre currently touring, has been to Europe and met thousands of people since I saw him last, and he remembers me? You know what happened next, I drew the line." Coupling her life-long love for music with her desire to be a world-famed writer, Chelsea changed her major one last time--to Journalism with a minor in music. With this she anticipates to conquer the world and Rolling Stone. Since then, she saw a promotion when she went from stagehand to production bitch for a small sound company, then networked and joined the crew of a larger regional sound and lighting company, where she became a lighting tech. She said from day one that if she was introduced to the right people, she would do the rest, and that pretty much defines her activities from day to day. Since she emerged on the scene only 1.5 years ago, Chelsea has traded in her working pass (which requires a 9 am load in and a 4 am load out) for a photo pass (which allows her to show up at her leisure smelling clean and fresh.) She still helps out from time to time--helping with the in or out or running lights when they need a tech and says she wouldn't trade the experience for the world. "I know A LOT of people in the industry: stage hands, LD's sound techs, road crews, security people, promoters, musicians, venue owners...the list goes on. I am one of them and they know they can trust me. It amuses me to go to a show in San Angelo and someone from the newspaper all dressed in slacks with their cookie-cutter questions ready and their apprehensive approach. I show up in pajamas sometimes, buy the bassist a beer and swap war stories, blend in as someone who should be backstage, not someone who has a press pass to get them there for five minutes. I'm not too good for the atmosphere (I am in fact part of the atmosphere) and I think the approach is pertinent. I've always had a need to know exactly how things work and what's going on and I think it helps to be on a level that's real and that artists can relate to. I help build their production, I help set their stage, and in the end the band respects that. I'm not here to dredge up deep dark secrets for online publication, although many feel comfortable enough to tell them to me, they know "off the record" means off the damned record. I'm combating the perception of media being the enemy, and i guess that in many cases that is true. I'm not out to give bad press--if I think you suck, I just won't cover you. I don't want to get a reputation of band bashing. I've seen a lot and experienced it from the other side and I know they all work hard, my job is not to tear anyone down for doing what they love, however un-gracefully that may be." Chelsea is currently a staff writer for San Angelo Live, a contributor to Good Times of West Texas and a journalist for Rock On Request Magazine. She attends generally three or four shows a week, works pretty much every major concert in the region, and has established contacts in the industry that will be instrumental in her success as a rock music journalist. Chelsea is highly involved in the promotion of local and statewide bands, seeks to find talent where-ever it may be, and conducts interviews and does show reviews on a regular basis. She has seen and worked with a hefty percentile of rock and roll acts that have come through Texas in the past year and a half, and is interested in hearing everyone out there who has something to offer their audience.ALL PHOTOS ON THIS SITE ARE THE SOLE WORK CHELSEA CANDRA SCHMID
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