At One With God & Guitar: Chris Bovard

Birthday tribute to a Great American guitar hero more people should've heard of

In the late 90s I was a manager at a music store in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. A colleague said he knew a “hot guitarist” moving to town and asked if he could find a job at the store. I was all for it and Chris not only got hired, I turned my manager-title over to him when I quit. I felt that he’d be better than I for that position, and I was right. Chris loved gear—using it, talking about it, handling it with all five senses—and his passion was contagious. He ended up staying in that job for 22 years, helping and motivating 1000s of people with their musical needs and desires.

Chris’s legacy preceeded him. Heritage Guitar company named a guitar after him and he’d toured extensively with various bands around the Pacific Rim, earning him notoriety as a blues-rock guitarist extraordinaire on par with Stevie Ray Vaughan. As a long-time resident of Hawaii, Chris did cameos in “bar band” scenes in the MAGNUM P.I. TV show.

Circumstances led him to Pennsylvania, where I got to know him and his lovely family. He and I had a flurry of musical activity till around 2002, from front porch jams to studio projects, then we drifted apart. He joined a notable blues rock band, The Blind Chitlin Kahunas, who I played on my radio show (on NPR 2009-11)—which was probably the last time I laid eyes on him.

I was deeply saddened by Chris’s untimely passing in 2022. There is no doubt that he made a difference with his big-hearted personality and his incredible expression of music. To watch him play was to witness someone truly joined with his instrument (he literally never left home without a guitar). Every solo he did was unique, mind-boggling, and had a life all its own.

To my knowledge this is the only final production of Chris and I recorded together: “I am Fine With That,” the Word2Soul Project w/lyricist Amy Mintzer (released 2007). A critic wrote, “Bovard puts a roof on it all with stunning guitar parts. He is a master of dexterity, tone, and soul!” God bless Chris and his family—see you at that great jam in the sky.

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