Hello, this is Leslie and I am the host
of the Why Not Today podcast.
This is a podcast to celebrate people who have been
courageous and said, why not today?
I started the podcast in honor of my father,
Patrick Kane, who often said, why not today?
I'm based in Reston, Virginia,
planned community right outside of DC
and thanks for joining us today.
And I am excited, this is the second episode
in our second season, so it's been over a year,
which is a milestone and really fun.
And I love meeting new people and their stories.
And today I have Christian Quisenberry,
did I say that right?
Quisenberry.
Quisenberry, okay.
As my guest, and I would like to talk about,
you never know who you're gonna meet
and how you're gonna connect with someone.
So Christian, I was introduced to first down
at Smith Mile Lake, a friend of mine knows somebody
that is a musician and he played on his dock
and we went years ago and then during COVID again
and Christian was playing, kind of got to know you there,
Christian, and then reached out to you about playing music
locally here in Northern Virginia,
but then it just kind of followed you.
You had a song come out, heard it,
and I love your story and your courage
and what you've had to overcome in your life.
And so, and we're excited to have you share your story
and share with listeners kind of what you've been able
to do with your life.
So why don't you introduce yourself?
I don't know you that well, except for seeing you on stage,
you're an amazing musician.
I almost forgot to call you.
It's funny when you see me on stage
and then when you see me off stage,
it's like, is that really the same guy?
I kind of lose myself on stage a little bit,
but hi, I'm Christian Quisenberry, I'm 26 years old.
I was actually born in Sacramento, California
when I was two years old, I was adopted
and moved out here to Huddleston, Virginia,
Smith Mountain Lake area, that's where I was raised.
It's where I live now. What a difference, California.
West coast to East coast, right?
Yeah, all town Virginia.
Yeah, I'm still a hippie though.
But anyway, so yes, it was, I grew up on a farm
with my two sisters, my dad, my mom.
I didn't really have the best childhood.
I mean, I had an awesome childhood, don't get me wrong,
but it's kind of weird.
I went from kind of an abusive situation
with my biological parents into now I'm 26
and I kind of have realized that maybe my adoptive situation
wasn't as good as it could have been either.
So I haven't really came from a lot of good situations.
My dad was an alcoholic growing up my whole life.
And I think that's where a lot of my alcohol addiction
and drug addiction, drug abuse came from, was seeing that.
And my mom was kind of an enabler for that.
She didn't really approve of it here,
but she didn't really do anything to prevent it.
So it wasn't really an easy childhood.
There are good times, we had good times
and there are bad times, but that's everybody.
What's a fun fact about Christian?
Oh, fun fact about me, let's see.
This is the first time I've ever had long hair.
Oh really?
Yeah, this is the longest my hair has ever been.
I've always had short hair
because my dad made me keep it short growing up.
And I told myself when COVID hit, I was like,
you know what, I'm gonna grow my hair out.
I'm gonna do what I want to do.
Well, that's really cool.
I just thought it was part of the musician look of you.
No, it's funny, I actually just, it's my COVID hair
and I decided to not cut it because it's funny
because people actually have now said to me like,
Christian, you can't cut it.
It's your rock star look, you can't cut it.
It is, that's how everyone else knows you.
I'll keep it, I'll keep it.
Give the people what they want.
Exactly, and is it kind of a rebellion against your dad?
A little bit, yeah, like come on, dude.
I do what I want now.
Exactly.
Well, so I love your story
and I'm excited for you to share it with everybody listening.
But before we start, what does courage mean to you?
Courage to me means just being upfront
and standing up for what you personally believe in,
whatever it may be.
It can be anything, whatever your religious base is,
your political base or just how you view life.
Courage is standing up what you personally believe in
and not letting other people dictate
who you are and who you should be.
Love that, yeah, totally agree.
It's interesting with all the episodes,
everybody's got a different twist on what courage is.
My brother who I interviewed last week or the last episode
actually looked it up in the dictionary
and first person to do that, but.
Well, the Webster dictionary.
Yeah, exactly.
So it sounds like you've had a courageous life
from moving from West Coast to the East Coast,
from California, which is a whole different world
than Virginia, we've got time in both places
and being adopted and abuse and alcoholism.
So it sounds like you've had a very courageous life
from the get go.
So, and then I know just recently on a journey
of becoming sober yourself in your music
that definitely takes courage.
So why don't you share with us,
what things you think you've done are courageous
and to give other people hope
and share a little bit of your journey
and the things you've had to do that are courageous.
You probably have to keep doing it
and I was thinking about yesterday
because for those watching or listening,
it took us a couple of times to get this done.
And you've had major cell phone issues
and internet issues.
You admitted you almost threw the phone out the window,
which I can see you've seen.
But, and on a sober journey,
that is one of those things
that was probably maybe a little challenging.
Don't drive me to drinking, girl.
Yeah, I'm fine.
All right, share some stories.
So yeah, so I guess for me,
the first, the biggest thing is that
this is all I do for a living.
A lot of people tell me, that's a big step
in and of itself.
Music, it's crazy how our society won't
and they just refuse to view what I do
as an actual profession, like a real job, a real career.
Even on the level that I am,
I'm still pretty local, a little regional
as far as the artists that I am right now.
I'm not international or worldwide by any means,
but it's crazy to think that someone can look at me
and be like, oh, get a real job.
Like I jumped off the deep end from,
I worked the nine to fives, man.
I did kitchen jobs, I did CNA work,
I worked in the medical field.
I did, I was a painter for a little while.
I did the nine to five
and I just couldn't find what suited me.
So a little under two years ago,
I'm actually coming up on my gig aversary as well,
what I call it.
March 25th was the first show that I ever played
out into central Virginia music scene,
my first ever solo show.
And that was at the Clubhouse Bar and Billiards
in Lynchburg.
And that for me was like a huge just step of courage
because it was me saying like, look, I'm gonna do this.
I'm not gonna listen to what society is telling me
and I'm just gonna jump off the deep end with this
and see what happens.
It hasn't always been easy.
There are still financial struggles and stuff like that,
but I don't let that sway me from just keeping my nose
on the grindstone and just keep working at this.
That's kind of one of the stories I share
when I started this is I started a Mary Kay part-time
side hustle thing 28 years ago
and left my corporate job 23 and a half years ago.
And people thought I was crazy.
Like really new corporate and still to this day I get,
are you still doing that Mary Kay thing?
I'm like, are you still an attorney
or are you still a whatever?
I'm like, yeah.
And it's given me an amazing life.
And yeah, it's not always easy.
I can tell you 23 years later, it is much better
and it gets much easier, but there's some days
that I'm like, oh, do I really wanna do this?
And then you think of the nine to five grind
and all the backend stuff that happens with it
and it's so worth it.
So keep going.
I applaud you for doing that
because it is a big leap of faith.
But you just gotta do it and you gotta stand your ground.
Like this is what I'm doing.
Right.
And in the midst of all that struggling
with the sobriety thing,
I don't struggle as much with it now.
Now it's just kinda like, I don't know, second nature
just to not drink.
I don't know, it just happens.
But a lot of people, especially when I'm playing
in a bar or restaurant, a lot of people come up to me
and be like, how do you even stand up here
and tell people that you're sober
when you're standing in a bar?
People are all around you drinking
and you're just up here.
I tell them like, look man, I just, I don't know.
I let the music take me.
I put my focus and my heart into my music
and into my family.
And that is what drives me to stay off that bottle
and to keep, you know, stay out of the bad stuff.
You know, it's not easy, but it's not hard at the same time,
because I discipline myself to know like,
this is what I should and should not do.
It's not good for me.
What is good for someone else
or what is okay for someone else is not okay for me.
And I've reconciled with that, you know.
So I can walk into a bar and I can sit at the bar
and I'll order myself, you know, a virgin tequila sunrise.
And you have no idea the funny looks I get from a bartender
when they're like, do you want a virgin tequila sunrise?
So you want pineapple juice and grenadine.
And I was like, yeah, yeah, that's what I want.
It just makes me feel like I'm doing something, you know.
Right.
So let's talk about your journey to becoming sober.
The courage it took you to do that.
Was it like just one day, did something happen?
Did you like, I'm just done with it or was it a journey?
Yeah, so me, it had actually been a problem for a while.
I started drinking heavily after high school.
I actually took my first drink when I was 14.
I remember, and now that I'm 26,
I'm like really done a lot of soul searching
over the last year and a lot of dipping into my childhood
and figuring out who I was and everything.
And I think the reason that I picked up the drink
in the first place was just to finally get this feeling
of acceptance from my dad, you know.
I had spent my whole life, you know,
going from a biological family to now an adopted family.
And I just wanted acceptance from somebody, you know.
So I thought maybe, you know,
drinking with him would be that.
Turns out it wasn't.
It actually just stemmed a whole slew of alcohol,
alcoholism for me in my life.
And after high school, I had started drinking a lot,
partying a lot.
I was doing different drugs and popping pills
and different stuff like that.
Were you in the music, were you performing then or?
No, I wasn't actually.
I was, so throughout high school,
I was really involved in the arts department.
I did the musicals and I was really involved in choir.
That's why I learned all of my vocal,
all my vocal coaching and everything was in choir.
And I thought for sure I wanted to be a music teacher.
My senior year, I took a internship with my choir teacher
and I learned real quick that maybe this isn't for me.
It's a little bit too complicated.
And then after high school,
I was like, found like, what am I gonna do with my life?
So that's when I joined the medical field
and did the CNA thing.
And then I jumped around the kitchens
and all in the midst of drinking and partying
with all of my buddies and stuff,
buddies of which that I don't have anymore
because it was like, as soon as I quit drinking,
they were like, well, we don't want to.
Isn't that amazing how it is?
And I wonder too, the environment you lived in,
I mean, you live at a resort area, a lake.
I wonder if that contributed to a lot of people on vacation.
I was actually, at the time I was actually living homeless
in my van.
Okay.
So I was, my parents had kicked me out.
This was in 2017, 2018.
And I was homeless living out behind Happy Coffee
in Bedford, it was a little coffee shop.
And I was actually working at Happy Coffee.
They didn't know that I was living behind the shop
in my van every night.
Every morning I'd get up and I'd run down to Bedford
YMCA and I'd take a shower real quick.
I had a membership down there.
I'd take a shower, brush my teeth.
And I'd go run down to Happy Coffee,
open up the shop for the day.
And they found out I was living in my van behind the shop
and the owners actually offered me a room in their house
to kind of help me get back up on my feet.
And they were letting me work for them while,
pay them rent and everything.
And long story short with that,
they actually ended up scamming all of us
and running off to El Salvador.
Oh wow, oh no.
That's a whole nother story.
Wow.
But that was actually all in the midst
of when I met my wife, Amy.
She was a regular at the coffee shop.
She did not like me at all.
Not many people did when I was in the height of my drinking,
which is understandable.
It took a little bit of coming around for her,
but we actually started living together.
We started dating within,
I think it was like two to three months
after meeting each other.
So I pulled on her heartstrings a little bit, I guess.
And then we moved in together
and that's when everything kind of flipped upside down
with the coffee shop being sold
and they scammed us and ran off.
So we were actually homeless.
She moved in with me at their house
and we were like, where the heck are we both gonna go now?
So her family actually brought us in.
Her mom and dad brought us in
and let us live with them for about a year, I think it was,
until we finally got up on our feet and got our own place.
But it was in that year, about that year, year and a half,
when I was still drinking hard and partying hard.
And I actually pulled Amy into a little bit of that lifestyle,
which I kick myself all the time still for.
I still work on the forgiveness aspect on my side,
forgiving myself.
But it was in that year and a half span
that things got really bad and I started getting just,
I was not the same person.
Every time I drank, I'd get angry and aggressive
and it was just, I became a spitting image of my dad.
Isn't that amazing how things, we just,
we model what we learn.
Right, it's all-
We don't like it, we try it, we copy it.
Not to say that it was my dad's fault in any way,
because it's not, that's my choice.
It was my choice to pick up on.
But that's what you knew, that was your reality.
Exactly, and that was the moment that I realized,
like, look, I found myself waking up
in my buddy Dave's camper one morning.
I didn't know how I got there,
I didn't know what had happened,
and then I find out that I had actually gotten
into a huge argument with Amy's family
and things went sideways and found myself
homeless again, rock bottom.
There's my rock bottom moment.
And I spent the next month just working to the bone,
getting myself straight and talking with her family
and pleading with them and apologizing and everything.
And by some grace, they gave me a second chance.
And here I am today now, just being able to say that,
thank you to them for giving me that second chance.
Right.
Sometimes that's really, and now I see why they say that,
sometimes that's really all anybody with addiction needs,
is we just need that second chance
to really show you that we can.
And sometimes a third and a fourth, and-
Right.
It's not an easy journey.
I know other people that have been in your situation
a lot older and with a lot more at stake in life,
not that you weren't, that ended up homeless.
Right.
Because of addiction.
And it's a disease, it's a scary disease.
And society feeds it very well.
There's somebody I know, my niece follows,
it does a blog about, she's stopped drinking.
And it's interesting, you have your extreme young
doing tons and just partying nonstop
to a lot of women, not to categorize,
but I know that just come home from work,
it's been a stressful day to have a drink,
and there's a bottle of wine, and then it's an issue.
So this person has a blog and she talks about
how society makes drinking okay, and it's part of society.
Like, let's go out to dinner and have a drink,
let's go to a winery, let's go listen to music
and have a drink, it's been a hard day.
Today is St. Patrick's Day.
When we're recording this, you know-
I literally said to my wife last night, I said,
look, St. Patrick's Day is like the day that
everyone is just okay with drinking all day long,
and no one says anything about it.
No, and so, I mean, it's so prevalent that that's accepted.
You know, and if you don't drink,
people are like, what's wrong with you?
I get it all the time, especially people my age.
Like, I have very few friends my age.
Most of my friends circle are people 40 and above.
Because it's like kids, people my age,
they're just like, they don't wanna hang out with me
because I don't drink.
No, they don't think life can be fun if you're not drunk.
Right.
And I know people like that.
Like, you know, I will say, I don't drink a lot,
but I drink, but I'm like, I'm good with one good cocktail
and I'm done.
Like, I don't like the feeling of not being in control.
And I love the, I mean, I will go out
and enjoy a drink or two, but-
I just recently found this whole shloof non-alcoholic beers.
Oh yeah.
I didn't even know that was a thing.
And I'm just like, wow.
There's a bunch of non-alcoholic beers
and there's a bunch of mocktails.
Right.
The bar is just open in DC, it's just a mocktail bar.
So when we came up, my first band show this year
was at Capitol Hill House, the Richmond Music Hall,
this year in January.
And we came up there and I actually tried
my first non-alcoholic beer at Capitol Hill House.
And it was like mind blowing.
I was like, wow, I actually can like, you know,
walk around the bar and people not give me funny looks.
And I still am not actually drinking alcohol.
This is really cool.
I was like, wow.
There's a funny story about that.
So they've had non-alcoholic beers
for years and years and years.
And I was with a friend one day
and he was drinking way too much.
And so he went to the restroom and I told the bartender
to start giving non-alcoholic beers.
Chicken, chicken.
And he had no idea.
But going back to the society
and how it's so normal to talk about drinking,
my youngest sister has Down syndrome.
Doesn't drink, never really.
I mean, she's had a few sips here and there,
but it'll be interesting.
She's 40 now and it'll be, she'll go,
oh, I had a hard day or it's happy hour.
I needed, and she'll go, I need a drink.
I'm like, you know, she just hears that, modeled.
And so she's not that she's ever gonna have one,
but that's her, what she says.
Interesting.
So when did you start playing music?
Oh man, music for me?
Was Amy a musician when you met her or did she?
Amy is a musician, yes.
So she, her and her whole family are musicians.
They're really heavy into bluegrass music.
They, when I met Amy, she was playing with her family.
I actually kind of stole their bass player a little bit.
Sorry, Ricky.
But they were playing in a family band.
They have a amazing family bluegrass band
that they've done for years.
Ricky's been playing music his whole life since he was 11,
I think is when he won his first mandolin competition.
But for me, music started when I was,
I was in fifth grade and my school did a Greece musical
and I was one of the Greece boys in that.
We performed that and then right after that,
or that was fourth grade and then fifth grade,
my, one of the cafeteria ladies invited me
to the summer program down at the church,
the local church in Huddleston
for their musical program that they were putting on.
And that was when I kind of fell in love
with the whole like performing,
the performing arts thing was a very young age.
And I got on stage with them
and I just really, I really fell in love with it.
So I stuck with it.
I started learning guitar when I was 10 years old.
I had gotten A's, straight A's on my report card.
And this is one of those good memories
that I have from my childhood.
I got straight A's on my report card
and my mom said, all right, well, here's a hundred dollars.
You can go buy whatever you want.
So we went to the pawn shop in Bedford
and it was this really old beat up New York pro
off-brand classical guitar.
Didn't even have all strings on it.
And I was like, that's what I want.
I want that guitar right there.
And it was $75 guitar and I bought it,
put new strings on it.
And my mom got me lessons
and I took lessons for about a month.
Learned like pretty much the bass chords and everything.
And just kind of took it from there myself.
And I started picking in the church bands
down at Huddleston.
I was the praise and worship leader for them for a while.
And then throughout middle school and high school
is when I started jamming with buddies and stuff
outside of school.
And then throughout high school
is when I did all the musicals
and I was really big in choir.
I did district choir and all state choir.
And I did honors choir my senior year.
I was ranked first in the state for tenor one
and tenor two, my junior and senior year.
So that was really cool.
I had those metals still hanging in my room.
And then everything just kind of fell off for me after that.
That was when I started drinking a lot
and I lost my passion for music
till I met my wife and her family.
And they, I just think it was the universe, man.
The universe was bringing me right back into music
and they knew what I needed.
And now I'm going on my fourth year sober
and it's because of the Ellis family
that I got back into music.
I remember every morning waking up with Amy
at her parents' house when we were living with her parents.
And every morning I'd wake up and I'd hear Ricky downstairs
playing a banjo or a mandolin or a guitar or something.
I'd hear him playing some kind of instrument
and I had to go down and I had to play with him.
So that was just kind of, you know,
the universe pulling me right back into it.
And I'm forever, forever in debt to them
for just bringing me in and getting me back on my feet.
Yeah, great story.
And I've kind of followed you on social media,
seeing you down there.
And I know you and Amy just got married last year.
Yep, in October last year, yeah.
Yeah, did you get married on Dave's Doc or it was originally?
We were originally gonna get married on Dave's Doc,
but that was right in the middle of Hurricane Ian.
So Hurricane Ian happened and we were like,
frantically like, what are we gonna do?
The week of the wedding.
Actually, I say we as if it was both of us.
It was me freaking out.
Amy was actually calm as could be.
She was like, it's okay, we're gonna be fine.
Cause my drummer for the band for Christian Q and the Groove,
John, his family actually is, it's now open,
but they own Old Town Social House in Rocky Mount, Virginia
that just recently opened up.
And at the time when we were getting married,
they were like in the process of getting it all,
finalized the building and getting everything set up
to get ready to open in the new year.
And they were just like, look, we've got this space.
It's got a bunch of old vintage furniture.
You can totally decorate it out for your whole wedding.
If you want to, you can use it, here you go.
And they saved the whole wedding day.
So it turned out great.
Yeah, I love your style.
Then we went to Oakdale, Ohio.
Yeah, definitely.
Yeah, cool.
So, and I love that it sounds like, you know,
you were adopted and went through rough times,
but the community really helped establish who you are.
I know you're very close with Dave Owens and-
If it wasn't for that man,
I wouldn't be out in the music scene.
Yeah, and I remember going years ago,
we would, my friend and I would take the boat
and he knew and another friend, several friends knew Dave.
And I remember many a days sitting at the dock, him playing
and just jamming.
It's funny, my friends that,
some friends that live at the lake, they're like, yeah,
they started doing this music on the dock because of COVID.
I'm like, oh no, no, no, no.
Oh no.
And my friend Sando was at Bernard
and we could be sitting on the balcony.
Yeah, you could hear it.
That's what we know.
Well, we could hear,
but he would say, oh, Dave's doors are open.
We should go over there.
They're playing.
They're getting ready to jam.
Like he could see across the lake
if the door was open to the boat house.
Well, I can promise you now you can hear it.
Oh, absolutely.
So Labor Day and I love that you guys do the concerts.
So this is kind of fun.
If anybody's listening or watching
and you spend time at Smiths on Lake,
they do, you still gonna do it this year, the concerts?
Yes ma'am, we got three.
We were actually talking about it this morning.
It's so fun to bring it up.
So much fun.
So Memorial Day, Labor Day and 4th of July,
the Sunday of those holiday weekends,
they jam on the dock at Dave's house.
Right back marker R8.
Okay.
I don't know where, I just know where it is on the lake.
Well, it's funny.
If you're a lake person, you know what that means.
Okay.
So I had a friend of mine last year that was there
staying at Bernard's and we were texting back and forth.
And I know she's into music.
I'm like, oh, you gotta go here around,
take your boat over there.
And she went, she's like, this is the coolest thing.
But there were probably two, 300 people, boats everywhere.
We've pulled up and Hannah and her friends,
which I remember Hannah when she was a little girl.
Hannah and us jello shots, but we were there,
I guess Labor Day and left before you guys were done
and went back to the dock and we were across near Bernard's
and docked the boat.
And I'm like, we can hear them all over here
than it was over there.
So yeah, so that's a fun thing.
So, but I love, Dave is definitely the father figure
and I've watched him.
Definitely.
Watched your story with him.
And we need people to guide us
when we don't have our own parents or role models.
That's right.
So I know you've got a bright future ahead of you.
Lots of great things.
So anything you would share to encourage somebody else
to be courageous?
Just be yourself.
That's one thing I've learned most important
and especially, I don't know, I've done,
like I said, I've done a lot of soul searching
in the last, really in the last six months.
I'm almost on the verge of tears
because I've spent a lot of time
in the last six months to a year,
just really searching myself
and diving back into my childhood memories.
And it's taken a lot for me to realize
I'm 26 years old and I had no idea who I was until now.
And sorry.
Okay.
It's a journey and it takes courage.
Whoops, I lost him.
Uh-oh.
Hopefully we can get him back in here.
Hold on.
All right, so I'm gonna kill some time here.
So Kristen got a little choked up and left my screen.
We've been having lots of technology issues.
So I will hope he comes back on.
But meantime, we're almost done, so that's good.
But I always try to tie this back to my dad.
Now, of course, Christian never met my dad,
but his story has a lot of similarities
and a lot of coincidences.
Like my dad grew up in California,
moved to the East Coast, and I could say that.
But I think the biggest thing is not tying Christian,
but tying Christian's life,
that my dad was one of those people,
it sounds like Dave Owens was, to Christian.
And my dad helped a lot of people that were struggling
to help them turn their life around.
He was the father figure.
I know I have friends that say they had more conversations
with my father than they ever did their own father.
And so I think that ties in my dad,
to my dad so much that, yeah, Christian took a village
and he's only 26.
He has such a big life ahead of him,
such a journey ahead of him.
So sorry, he got off, I know he's having internet issues.
But as I said, we're almost done.
So I'm gonna finish up now.
We may have a second recording I'll add as an addendum
to this if he comes back in.
But I wanna thank Christian for being my guest,
for being open and sharing his story.
And I hope this gives other people hope.
And if you are struggling or know somebody struggling
to get help and there's a better life,
and if you're on the journey for music
and you, be you and do what makes you happy.
And you can make a difference and touch people's life.
So Christian does have a song that he wrote
that is about his journey and becoming sober.
And so I can share that too in the show notes.
So thanks again for listening.
I'm excited, this is our second year as a podcast.
And it's been exciting to hear Christian's story.
Please encourage somebody else to listen.
We're on all the platforms, iTunes, Spotify,
like us, review us if you wouldn't mind.
Check out the website.
And yeah, thanks for being a listener of Why Not Today
and just say, why not today, anything is possible.
All right, thanks again, Christian.
And it was a great episode, bye.