Meet Chris Kerrigan | Singer/Songwriter, Sole Member of Compassion Fatigue

We had the good fortune of connecting with Chris Kerrigan and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Chris, have you ever found yourself in a spot where you had to decide whether to give up or keep going? How did you make the choice?
I think that once you fully get into a thing where you’re making art mostly for yourself, this becomes very easy: you should give up when you’re not enjoying it anymore. If you become audience-conscious, it’s way too easy to slip into an unhappy cycle where you feel you need to grind it out, give the people what they want, pinpoint what made them like you in the first place and keep on giving it to them. I think this is even more insidious when you’re making art in a democratized, DIY internet sort of way, which is more or less what I”m doing, If all you’re doing is making art that aims to please, then the thing you once dearly loved will feel like a job and you’ll make things you’ll be ashamed of and embarrassed by when you look back on them. Therein lies the PARADOX! If you commit yourself to only making things that you ALONE will enjoy, the sorts of things you can honestly say you would genuinely be a fan of if you hadn’t made them yourself, there’s a way bigger chance that somebody will find your stuff and connect with it. Why? Because you’re not all that special. You like the sorts of things that most people like, even though you think you have really niche, alternative tastes. This way of making art can be really hard, though, because if you’re a person with any kind of investment in being liked and/or praised, you will constantly lie to yourself about how honest or dishonest your art is.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I don’t know. I do a lot of things I consider to be worthwhile and it’s not always obvious to me which of them can justifiably be called “art.” But since nobody from Plato to Nietzsche to Oscar Wilde and back again has successfully defined art in any kind of enduring, agree-upon way, I certainly won’t get up on my hind legs and try it.
I’m very proud of Compassion Fatigue, the singer/songwriter project I finally started taking seriously circa 2019. I was in a dead end nonprofit job feeling empty and complacent, so I took a tip from my buddy Alexander Hamilton to “write my way out” and I got a weird stroke of inspiration out of nowhere to finally start really doing it for myself. I’m proud that I did that and I’m proud that I kept doing it for years while nobody at all cared. When one of my songs went viral in 2023, I’m proud that I didn’t lean into its aesthetic and try to recreate it. Most importantly, I’m proud of the six albums I’ve put out since 2021 because I still like them and I do not cringe when I hear them. You couldn’t pay me to listen to the crap I wrote in my twenties, but I think I have a handle on things now.
The only self-imposed rule I really have for Compassion Fatigue is that it’s done on my own terms. If I lived in 1985 or whatever and some record executive found me and said “buckle up, kid, you’re headed to the top, let’s set you up with a fancy producer and a new hairdo,” I would probably do it but it wouldn’t be called Compassion Fatigue. Compassion Fatigue is what I cobble together in solitude with whatever crude tools are in my hands.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I’m bad at this. I get so defensive about Los Angeles when people mischaracterize it by its cheap touristy Hollywoody elements, but once it’s time to show somebody around I’ve got nothing. I probably like the idea of my city more that I like actually exploring it. But OK, I’ll try.
You land in the late evening, mercifully in Burbank Airport and not LAX. Get some sleep, we’ll start fresh in the morning. Good morning, let’s start with breakfast at Garcia Brothers in Van Nuys, try the chilaquiles. Good, right? From here, we head to the ocean, because let’s face it, that’s what we really have going for us here. But we’re not going to sit and gaze at the water, we’re going to get in it and splash around. Then we grab a late lunch at Bay Cities Deli, but only if it’s a weekday afternoon and it’s not chaotic in there. You”re probably exhausted and sun-drenced, take a nice nap in the car while we do the horrible 405 to the awful 101. Then we get home and clean up. We go to Guildhall, a bar in Burbank with lots of board games. We play Stratego or some crap. Then we do Street Food Cinema at the Autry Museum, it’s a thing with food trucks and an outdoor movie on a field. We bring my husky Cosmo and he’s so rambunctious that he ruins the movie for us and we regret inviting him. Then we go home.
I don’t know, I’m sure we figure out other stuff to do on the other days.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I’d like to shout out my old friend Sam Payes. His songs were the first I ever played in a band when I was seventeen years old and he’s been consistently writing outstanding music for upwards of thirty years without getting attention at all or even asking for it . Up to that point, I had completely limited my artistic passions to an exclusive focus on performing musical theatre, which is a wonderful thing to do, but obviously you’re pretty locked into being a part of telling somebody else’s story. I heard Sam’s songs toward the end of my adolescence when I was beginning to see expressive value in folk music and songwriting, and what he offered was an example of just how possible it was to GIVE BIRTH to something by organizing thoughts and feelings into chords and lyrics.
You can hear his music on all streaming platforms, he records under the name Super Glass Houses.

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@HaterChris2011