Porter builds musical resume

Christian Porter, opening for Thriving Ivory, Fri., Dec. 10, 7 p.m., Sherman Theater (524 Main St., Stroudsburg), $12 advance, $15 day of. Info: christianportermusic.com, 570.420.2808

by Nikki M. Mascali
Weekender Editor

Christian Porter has only been playing guitar for a few years, but the 19-year-old is already making a name for himself. Not only has he been performing since he was 14 and had his first bar gig at 15, the Stroudsburg musician has opened for former “American Idol” Bo Bice and folk-rock act Dawes when both played shows at the Sherman Theater in Stroudsburg.

Porter’s next big-ticket opening act will again be at the Sherman Friday, Dec. 10 when he’ll precede Thriving Ivory during the band’s Weekender-sponsored show. Dive is also on the bill.

“First of all, it helps my confidence, which is huge,” Porter says about the opening gigs. “You gotta be confident, you can’t be nervous. It’s a complete honor to do these kind of shows.

“It helps my career in a great way with resumes, and to say to other places, ‘I opened up for Bo Bice,’ It just shows my professionalism, I feel.”

Another resume builder for Porter, who is majoring in music at East Stroudsburg University, are his relationships with Martin guitars and Casio keyboards. The relationships stem from Porter’s gigs at the Sarah Street Grill, also in Stroudsburg, which is the very place Porter had his first bar performance.

“The way Martin guitars came up is that the host of the open mic at Sarah Street Grill had known some people from Martin,” Porter says. “We got in contact with them and talked to them over the phone, and they offered preferred musicianship with them to use their guitar and do some great stuff for them.”

The Casio connection came about the same way when the company’s now-senior manager of public relations, Melissa Keklak, saw Porter playing on his “old Roland keyboard.”

“Instantly I saw how talented he was,” Keklak remembers. “I had noticed he was playing on a very old keyboard, and I knew that we had great performance/learning keyboards at Casio that could be a better fit for him. I brought him in, and he performed for our keyboard division, as well as our CEO at the time. … We have been working with Christian for a few years now, and I have enjoyed following his journey every step of the way.”

Porter thanks his family for his love of music; his mother taught him piano when he was a youngster while his dad played “a little bit of guitar, and the rest of my family sang and did campfire songs.”“I can’t even remember when I started, but I remember there was always a guitar next to the piano, and I was like, ‘Dad, can you show me how to play this?’” he recalls.

The bulk of his guitar training, though, came from himself.

“Guitar I just picked up, and I used the Internet to help me out, and that’s how I taught myself everything about guitar,” he says. “Once I got into college last year, I started taking some of the guitar courses, so I’ve gotten a little bit of guitar training in the past year, but everything up to that up to that point was all self-taught.”

Porter was accepted to Boston’s acclaimed Berklee College of Music but says “it was way too much money for me, especially for the first years, which is just general education courses,” hence his attending ESU. He plans to move out to California with his aunt next summer to see what opportunities are out there, including possibly finding a more music-driven school.

He cites singer-songwriters like Jack Johnson, Jason Mraz and John Mayer as influences.

“(Mayer) is one of my biggest influences,” Porter shares. “He’s got great guitar skills as well as pretty decent vocals. He’s a package deal, that’s what I like about him.”

Porter released his first album, “One Reason,” in 2007. Not wholly content with the first version, he re-recorded it in his home studio a year later. He’s working on a follow-up, which he says was nearly finished this summer.

“I wasn’t completely happy with the recordings and the process and the writing skills I had with it,” he says. “I do all the guitar work, the bass work, the drum work, everything. When it’s just me, I have that one unique style that kind of meshes too much that there’s just nothing there to grasp you.”

Porter’s been working with other musicians on the album, and “unfortunately I’m going to have to re-record a lot of things to get the good sound out of it.”

He says he’ll be playing some of the new songs at Friday’s Thriving Ivory show.

“The first album had more of an acoustic, pop-rock style to it,” he says. “This album has completely different all-around styles to it — we’ve got some styles of Santana, we’ve got soft acoustic, we’ve got rock, I’ve got a ukulele song, which is really cool. It’s a really different style for me, which is awesome.”