Music & TV star Charles Esten talks about Pittsburgh childhood ahead of Strip District gig
PITTSBURGH ― He's a former Sewickley area resident, a star of Netflix and ABC dramas, and a singer-songwriter who's played Nashville's prestigious Grand Ole Opry 176 times.
Fresh off starring as Harold Hill in the Pittsburgh CLO's summer production "The Music Man," Charles "Chip" Esten heads back our way Sept. 7, supporting his independent debut album "Love Ain't Pretty," with a solo headlining concert at City Winery Pittsburgh.
"That's in The Strip, right?" Esten asked in an Aug. 23 phone interview where he later dropped a Yinzer perfect "dahntahn" to prove Pittsburgh still courses through his blood.
I'm from the heart of it. Born in Allegheny General," Esten, now of Nashville, said. "I lived in Green Tree when I was younger. And then my dad, after my parents divorced, lived right downtown in Gateway Center in the Gateway Towers. And then he got remarried and got some other kids and we spent the rest of our days in Sewickley, and I've still got a ton of family in Moon who I love dearly. So, I've got a heart for Pittsburgh for sure."
His father, Edgeworth businessman Charles E. "Chuck" Puskar, sold insurance for Penn Mutual, and dispensed wisdom that stuck with Esten, and inspired the new song "A Little Right Now."
"As a salesman, he used to tell me it's always feast or famine. Somedays you're wandering in the desert and somedays you're sitting in the oasis drinking a smoothie or a margarita. He was always saying things like, 'I'm just waiting for my ship to come in,'" Esten said. "And I was thinking how across the board there's so many versions of that and so many different lifestyles. If you're a farmer, you're just praying for rain, if you're a sailor you're praying for a gust of wind so there's faith involved in every life. And this is just a song about how sometimes you're not only running out of faith, but you can remember when it was easy ? when I had so much faith, and when I had so much hope in my heart ? and I don't have that right now. Which is as country of a theme as you can get, really, the heartaches and that kind of thing. But it says in the bible if you ask, you will receive. And if you have the faith of a mustard seed, even if you just have a little, that might be enough to get you on your knees to ask for some more faith. That's the essence of that song. So, when love ain't pretty, and life is kicking you in the teeth, I can use a little more right now."
The "Love Ain't Pretty" title track approaches love from an interesting angle, with Esten's rugged voice noting, "if there's anything that'll hurt you more, I ain't seen it yet," before concluding "love ain't pretty, but it's beautiful," which he now recognizes as the thematic thread running through each song and binding the album together.
Esten elaborates: "The song itself actually was the last one written for the album. Though it appears on there first and is the title track. We actually had all these other songs finished and I think what had happened is because we had been immersed in all those other songs, we ended up writing the through line that runs through all those songs."
His songwriting partners asked what he wanted the lyrical theme to be, "and I would say, 'Life is hard, love is dangerous, it can break you, but in the end there's nothing more beautiful than love.' I mean that's the thing that keeps us going through all of this, so sort of like the dichotomy of it. Love can do all those things to you, it can leave you on your knees, or it can lift you up to Heaven.
"We originally had another album title though frequently, and I think this is because I'm an actor, I like to make sure the things I'm singing are very sayable," Esten said. "They can have a bit of poetry to them. But in general, I like it to sound like if you or I if were just talking; does it sound right? Sometimes I'll stop in the middle of writing a song and say, 'Well, what are we trying to say here?' I was basically doing that. I was saying life is hard. It'll beat you up. Love ain't pretty. But I don't think it would have been enough just to say that. It's more than pretty. Pretty is too weak a word for the power of love. It's like the word 'nice.' I mean, it's better being nice than not nice. You want people to think you're nice. But there are deeper, more meaningful words like 'kind,' or that person is 'loving,' or that person is 'amazing.' So that's sort of what I meant. If love was a person, it wouldn't be nice. That person would be so much more. That's basically what the album is about as well."
From "Willing to Try," which optimistically quotes Bob Marley's "every little thing is gonna be alright," to the defiant rocker "I Ain't" with "walking your line is like walking the plank," Esten covers a gamut of emotions.
The album's most personal track, "One Good Move," was written about his wife, Patty, whom he met in college.
"Like so many people, as a young guy I made a lot of bad moves," Esten, 55, said. "I made a lot of mistakes. You've got to learn from your mistakes. But as I was talking to some younger folks not too long ago, I said you know what, I did make one good move: I met my wife, and somehow the fool that I was I was able to hang onto her, so that was my one good move. And these were songwriters I was talking with, and they said, 'Well, that's a title.' And it hadn't even occurred to me. And I was like, oh, it's actually perfect. It's a great title. And my wife and I together could tell you love ain't pretty. We've been through some times that weren't easy.
"Our daughter Addie, when she was two-and-a-half, was diagnosed with leukemia and she is now happy and healthy. She played soccer at William & Mary where we went and is now working full time as a business analyst and she's just doing so well," Esten said. So we know what it is to go through those hard parts, especially together."
Esten serves as honorary spokesman for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s annual Light The Night Walk fundraisers.
"I can remember walking across one of the bridges in Nashville along with a couple thousand people for one of those walks, and everybody holding a lantern; red in support of somebody fighting blood cancer, gold in memory of somebody who lost their battle with blood cancer and then you had all the folks holding a white lantern like our daughter, a survivor, so there's a whole lot of unity," Esten said. "It's called Light the Night, and by the way these are in every major city so if that resonates with you, please find your local Light The Night and become a part of that. But for us, it was just a real good way to give back because we had such incredible gratitude not just to God for answering our prayers but to all the doctors and medical staff and all the people that years before had raised money that helped find the cures that helped our daughter get to survive and live this life she does."
The Esten family's three daughters appear in photos and video clips that fuel the music video for "One Good Move." The family's dogs appear in the video, too, including a golden lab that appeared with Esten on ABC's "Nashville," the country music-set melodrama where Esten portrayed singer-guitarist-love interest Deacon Claybourne.
"The first dog I got in my whole life was from the show 'Nashville," Esten said, adding over the phone that right on cue, that dog just entered his room. "Deacon was given a puppy on that show when he was in a particularly miserable spirit and later they wrote the dog off the show for no good reason that I could imagine. So, I said, 'well, you're not getting him back.' And they were kind, and they let me keep that dog. And that dog is my dog Blue now. And Blue later got together with a neighborhood yellow lab, a lovely family and their dog, and they had six puppies, and we got one of them, and that dog is named Ryman, like the Ryman Auditorium."
In one of those life-meets-art type of situations, Esten wrote songs for the soundtrack of "Nashville," which aired from 2012-18, including "I Know How to Love You Now," co-authored with Deana Carter and used in the show's season three premiere.
The "Nashville" series finale aired the same night Esten made his City Winery concert debut, at the chain's Boston location.
"That was a little bit of a coincidence, but it turned out to be really special because we aired that final episode on a big screen right there on the stage, then after that I played a concert with all those "Nashville" songs surrounded by "Nashville" fans. So, I have some great memories of playing City Wineries and this will be my first time playing the Pittsburgh City Winery."
When he's on stage as musical artist Esten, does he ever feel a temptation to channel his inner Claybourne?
"I rarely even have to think like that because he's such a part of me that he comes out all the time," Esten said. "In fact, he's all over this album. Deacon could have sung 'Love Ain't Pretty' for sure. Deacon could have sung 'A Little Right Now'. And there's others on the album like that. It was really something to get to live in his boots for six years. I still play his guitar. That's his guitar. I've got his dog; I play his guitar. The other night I played at the Grand Ole Opry again ? they're so kind they keep asking me back and it makes me so happy, and it was my 176th time there ? and when I was on stage I said 'well, not only am I playing his guitar, but as I was putting my shirt on this evening to get ready to come here I noticed in the collar it says, 'Property of ABC.' so I'm wearing his shirt as well.' He borrowed a lot of things from me, so I don't think that's a problem that I'm borrowing a lot of things from him. He steps in and out of my music and my life all the time, and I'm glad for that."
From his concert stage in Pittsburgh, Esten is vastly less likely to channel Ward Cameron, the greedy, giant gold cross-stealing character he's played to the hilt on the Netflix teen drama "Outer Banks."
"That role turned out to be an incredible metaphor in a way," Esten said. "That's the thing I love most about 'Outer Banks,' it's a bit of a morality tale because there's Ward with all the gold and this bejeweled golden cross he's sacrificed so much of his life for, and he basically has nothing. And then you have all these Pogues (a tight-knit group of working-class friends) stuck on this island at the end of season 2 and they basically have everything. They have no money, but they have each other. I love being the bad guy to their heroes. What's interesting is there's a scene where Ward is looking at that cross and he comes away a little different it feels like. We'll see how that ends. I won't do a spoiler, but it was so much fun. I love all those castmates of mine, Chase (Stokes) and Madelyn (Cline) and Maddie Bailey and all that group. I love them all so much. They really made it a joy to chase them around and steal all their gold (laughs)."
He soon returns to the land of the Black and Gold, still a Steelers fan to the core, having led the pre-game Terrible Towel Wave at Acrisure Stadium, where he's also sung the National Anthem.
"And it was a Ravens game of all things, so it was a big one," Esten said. "Those things feel like such blessings to me. That team has meant so much to so many. Especially those early Super Bowls when Pittsburgh was going through a rough time economically and in every other way, and so many people were leaving the town and all they had with them was their Terrible Towel and their Steelers coat. And I was kind of the same, being a young kid, my parents were breaking up, my mom was moving to Virginia, and I had such pride about Pittsburgh. Any of my friends when I was a kid knew I loved the Steelers. So, all those years later to be standing on that field, twirling that flag, singing that anthem. I was really blessed."
This past May, Esten got to play celebrity flag football with Troy Polamalu at the Steelers hall-of-famer's inaugural Resilience Bowl fundraiser at Acrisure Stadium for The Neighborhood Resilience Project, an agency assisting Pittsburgh communities.
"To get to step onto the field with one of those absolute legends that was amazing. So the Steelers have blessed me my whole life and have continued to this day.
As he said in a 2016 interview with The Times, Esten's late father, was business partners with Steelers center Ray Mansfield, so Esten got to run around Three Rivers Stadium locker room with '70s Steelers dynasty members like Rocky Bleier, Lynn Swann, Joe Greene and John Stallworth.
One time, at his dad's insistence, the young Esten did his Myron Cope impersonation in front of the Steelers' legendary announcer.
"That was my early adventures with feeling nervous when you're about to perform," Esten said. "It was hard to do an impression of the guy to the guy. But man-oh-man he brought us so much happiness. What a character, Pittsburgh through-and-through."
Esten's last Pittsburgh performance, July 9-14, was starring in the Pittsburgh CLO's "The Music Man" at the Benedum Center.
"It was incredible. I love this kind of life," Esten said. "I have friends I remember early on would say to me, 'Oh my gosh, acting is so uncertain. How do you live not knowing what you'll be doing next year?' And I remember saying to them, how can you live knowing exactly what you'll be doing in 5 or 10 years? I always was chasing that other life that had so many surprises to it."
The Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera's "Music Man" adhered to a tight schedule.
"It was one week of rehearsals for one week of shows and my first thought was, 'I don't know if I can do that; if I'll be able to get good enough to learn all those lines.' First of all, it's like there's so many lines. He was an early rap star; he spoke so fast. But that was the challenge of it all," Esten said. "It's like, well if you're afraid maybe you can't walk away. Maybe you have to do this so I said yes and sort of busted my butt to learn it all before I got there because I know I had to study the choreography once I got to Pittsburgh and it was incredibly rewarding. Not only the show itself and getting to work with such amazing castmates and the director and choreographer and getting to succeed at it to the point I could enjoy, it but add in the fact I got to do it right downtown in the heart of Pittsburgh where I grew up, when my dad lived in the Gateway Towers for a couple of years after the divorce, and I was a little street rat running down to The Point and swimming in the fountains. To get to be right there in my old stomping grounds and stay there for two weeks again while I focused on the Benedum, which is such a jewel of Pittsburgh. That was huge for me and real special and one of the surprises that comes out of a life like this."
He sometimes does full band shows, but City Winery will find him alone on stage.
"Basically, I sing a couple of songs with a guitar and then go over to the piano. It's fun because I think they really complement each other," Esten said. "Is it fun to have a big band and make a big noise? Absolutely. But you do absolutely lose something with that you gain in a solo performance and that is that intimacy and connection. It gets very real. There's just me and that guitar and that piano and this audience."
That intimacy brings more improvisation, and don't forget: Esten's first big break in TV was as a cast member from 1999-2005 on ABC's improv comedy show "Whose Line Is It Anyways?"
"It allows me to stop on a dime. I've been in the middle of one song and stopped and said, 'You know what, I'm going to play this one instead, and then move to another one. It's just a lot more improvisational as the spirit moves me and as the crowd moves me. And I can see what's moving them and move toward that as well. And there's probably going to be a little more conversation since I'm back there in the heart of Pittsburgh."
If you go:
Who: Charles Esten in concert.
Where: City Winery Pittsburgh, 1627 Smallman St.
When: 6:30 p.m. Sept. 7.
Tickets: $75 to $100 at citywinery.com/pittsburgh
This article originally appeared on Beaver County Times: Music & TV star Charles Esten discusses Pittsburgh homecoming concert
