There is no one without the other for Chris Combs. Even from childhood, picking up his first guitar meant also composing original music, an inextricable partnership that has shaped his lifelong love of the medium and, ultimately, his career as a working musician, now moving into its third decade. A native Tulsan, Combs’ musicality took equal inspiration from a handful of guitar teachers, choral directors in church choirs, and early childhood trips to visit family in New Orleans. This foundation of equal parts instrumental skill, music theory, and a curiosity for jazz music and improvisation has made Combs not only a natural bandleader but a coveted collaborator and producer across genres and styles. Shortly after joining renowned band Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey in 2007 on lap steel, he became the group’s primary composer, touring jazz festivals globally with the band and meeting and working with some of his musical heroes, including Matt Chamberlain (David Bowie, Tori Amos, Brad Mehldau), Steven Bernstein (Leonard Cohen, Levon Helm), Jeff Coffin (Bela Fleck, Dave Matthews), Mike Dillon (Ani DiFranco, Primus), John Medeski (Medeski, Martin, and Wood), and George Porter Jr. (The Meters). As the band’s lead composer, he wrote several new JFJO works, many of which netted glowing press in the U.S. and abroad and topped best-of lists. These include 2011’s “Race Riot Suite, ” a conceptual instrumental record depicting the then-largely unknown Tulsa Race Massacre, a devastating hometown theme he revisits even today as a live guitarist with many of the artists in the city’s Fire in Little Africa hip-hop collective. While touring with JFJO, Combs received a commission to compose one hour of music for a 14-piece jazz ensemble in Switzerland, with the resulting performance met with such acclaim that he was invited back to do the same just two years later. It’s one small example of how Combs’ mind can endlessly scale: he routinely writes, records, and produces music as a solo artist or in any number of configurations and with any number of musical colleagues. His current roster of projects includes Combsy, Lil’ Big Band, Gogo Plumbay, Mike Dee & Stone Trio, Booomclap, and of course Chris Combs—Trio, Quartet, Sextet, and so on. Storied Chicago-based jazz and blues magazine DownBeat named him a Rising Star instrumentalist in its Critics’ Poll in both 2022 and 2023, and he capped last year with two new records: Neon Eyes, with his experimental indie project Combsy, and Run Down the Ghost as Chris Combs proper, recorded with Aaron Boehler on bass (Wilderado) and Josh Raymer (JFJO) on drums. Combs kicked off 2024 performing, writing, and recording in NOLA and has both extensive trio touring on the books and several new records already in the works via Tulsa-based Horton Records. It’s not some chameleonic restlessness that Combs could play every night of the week in a different band after a day of writing music for another; he’s one of the fortunate few whose prolific muse never rests—and who has the work ethic and skill to keep pace.
