Chris Trapper

Wheels Off with Rhett Miller

Rhett Miller

Arts, Performing Arts, Music

5.0 • 596 Ratings

🗓️ 11 June 2025

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Chris Trapper joins Rhett to talk about his winding, decades-long path through music—from lip-syncing Tom Jones as a kid to signing a major label deal with The Push Stars and building a solo career defined by resilience, honesty, and hustle. From his early days with The Push Stars to his recent solo album—written in the wake of personal loss—Chris opens up about creativity as therapy, the business of being an artist, and how a lack of a backup plan can sometimes be the best motivator. He shares the importance of optimism, the necessity of forgetting bad gigs, and the quiet power of sticking with it—even when there’s no backup plan. Listen to his new album Watching Sparks Fly By Follow Chris @christrapperofficial Follow Rhett @rhettmiller Wheels Off is hosted and produced by Rhett Miller. Executive producer Kirsten Cluthe. Editing by Matt Dwyer. Music by Old 97’s. Episode artwork by Mark Dowd. Show logo by Tim Skirven. Revisit previous episodes of Wheels Off with guests Rosanne Cash, Rob Thomas, Jeff Tweedy, The Milk Carton Kids, and more. If you like what you hear, please leave us a rating or review. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Wheels Off, a show about the messy reality of the creative life.
0:04.8	I'm Rhett Miller.
0:19.3	Chris Trapper is a name I've always heard. He's been around doing rock and roll as long as I have.
0:25.3	He had a band from Boston in the 90s called The Push Stars, really cool band.
0:31.4	It made some great music, and he's had a long solo career since then. You've probably heard his songs in any number of
0:41.6	movies and TV shows, and he's played, you know, gigs relentlessly, not unlike someone else I
0:52.1	know, raising my hand. He's great, great songwriter, hard worker. I know
0:58.1	this comes up a lot in my wheels off interviews, not just with musicians, but with people that
1:03.9	wind up having decades-long careers. They tend to be the people that really work hard. There's no other way to say it.
1:14.0	They tend to be the people that honor their talent by devoting time and energy to it. And
1:24.1	Chris has done just that. So it was really cool for me to get to talk to him and hear his stories.
1:30.7	I think you're really going to love this.
1:32.0	Please welcome to Wheels Off, Chris Trapper.
1:35.3	Welcome to Wheels Off, Chris Trapper.
1:37.1	Thank you so much for joining me.
1:38.5	How are you?
1:39.6	It is great to be here and I'm fantastic.
1:42.2	And I love your podcast because it's one of the very few artists hosted podcasts where
1:48.9	you're able to keep the focus on the guest and not talk about yourself the whole time.
1:54.8	That's what I've noticed through listening to multiple episodes.
1:59.1	So, and that's hard to do when you're used to having the attention come to
2:03.1	you, which you are. Well, thank you. That means a lot. I've had a hard time learning that.
	...

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