Chris DeAnda has been playing country music professionally for a couple of years now but he’s been in music for his whole life.
Born into a music-loving family, the Monahans resident graduated from MHS in 2015 and has stayed busy playing at mostly local gigs, although he’s now starting to see the number of his performances outside of the area increase.
“Most of the weekends that I perform are local,” DeAnda said. “The furthest that I’ve gone to do a show was in Kannopolis, North Carolina. … I mostly do local shows but I’m starting to pick up more gigs outside of the Permian Basin.”
This week, he’ll be in the Odessa area when he performs as the opening entertainment act at this year’s Permian Basin Fair and Expo at 8 p.m. Sept. 2 at the main stage.
“It’s pretty cool to get to do the opening night,” DeAnda said. “It’ll be great to headline that event.”
He performed at last year’s fair and expo as well but this time, he’ll get the opportunity to headline the event.
DeAnda graduated from Monahans High School in 2015.
He comes from a family of musicians as his cousins, uncle and older brother performed in a Spanish Christian Gospel band back in the 90s and early 2000s called Grupo Aqua Viva.
“My older brother went on tour with them,” DeAnda said. “They went around Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma area. My brother (Christian DeAnda) joined them and when I was little, I ended up joining them for a short time too. I rode the tour bus and all that fun stuff. Ever since then, it’s been in our blood to be in music.”
DeAnda mostly sings and performs country music even though it wasn’t always that way.
“When I was in high school, I wasn’t really into country music,” DeAnda said. “The first artist I ever heard was Darius Rucker and he’s the one who got me into my love for country music. I do a little bit of Texas country. I do a little bit of everything you hear on the radio and everything in between. I play whatever the crowd wants to hear and get them engaged at my live shows.”
As a songwriter, DeAnda says a lot of his songs come from real life experiences such as “breakups or riding on back roads.”
“Sometimes there’s an idea there and then I also have two good co-writers and my producer,” DeAnda said. “Sometimes we’ll have an idea and build around it. Other times, we’ll have a guitar pattern and then we’ll write some words to it. Sometimes we’ll have no idea at all and sit on a zoom call and decide what we’ll write about that day. You either have an idea or you don’t.”
Right now, DeAnda says his schedule is busy on Thursdays through Saturdays.
“I think a couple of weeks ago, I had my first Saturday off in like two months,” DeAnda said. “But it comes every so often that I’ll get a Friday off or a Saturday off or I’ll get the whole weekend off which is amazing but you’re so used to being on schedule that you’re like ‘what do I do now? I’m bored.’ Sometimes I’ll take that time to go out and support other artists on weekends that I’m off.”
DeAnda is pretty versatile when it comes to playing different instruments. He started off playing the drums as a kid and can also play the guitar and electric guitar as well as the piano.
“I started learning drums when I was 3 and picked it up when I was 5,” DeAnda said. “I’ve been playing drums for most of my life. when I began my sophomore year of high school, I got my guitar and I taught myself how to play and watched a lot of videos on YouTube.”
He grew up listening to different kinds of music including rock ‘n roll as well as rap before moving over to country.
“I was listening to a lot of rock music and rap music,” DeAnda said. “Sometimes, the rock music can be a little hard (to play) but when I listened to country, I was thinking ‘crap, this is pretty easy.’”
He’s excited to come back and perform at the Permian Basin Fair and Expo.
“This is my first headlining gig, especially on a big stage like this,” DeAnda said. “It’s actually cool. Doing it live last year was pretty cool but this year, it’ll be great to get the headlining spot.”
For more information about DeAnda and his music, go to tinyurl.com/5y2t6bwv.
If you go
- What: Chris DeAnda.
- When: 8 p.m. Sept. 2.
- Where: Permian Basin Fair and Expo (main stage).
- Where to purchase tickets: tinyurl.com/emjj7cvj
