Bend singer-songwriter Chris Beland just discovered his biological father is veteran guitarist John Beland. On Monday, they'll meet for the first time.
By Ben Salmon / The Bulletin - Last modified: December 06. 2010 3:05PM PST
Thanks to John Beland's long and high-profile career in the music business, the veteran guitarist, songwriter and producer receives his share of unusual e-mails from fans and other folks.
Some know his solo work or one of his songs that another singer turned into a hit. Others may recognize him as the leader of legendary country-rock band the Flying Burrito Brothers in the 1980s and '90s. And some may remember his years as an in-demand guitarist to big stars like Dolly Parton, Ricky Nelson and Linda Ronstadt.
Barbara Chabot, a 53-year-old social worker who lives outside Denver, wrote Beland a few months ago. She didn't fall into any of those categories, though she did see Beland perform with Nelson at a county fair in California in 1978.
But it was the highly personal nature of Chabot's message that drew Beland's attention.
“I sent him an e-mail and it said, ‘I really need to have contact with you.' And he wrote me back and said, ‘Um, do I know you?' ” Chabot said in an interview earlier this week. “And I said, ‘I think better than you remember.'
“ ‘This is a embarrassing, but a couple days ago I was shocked by the results of my son's paternity test,' ” Chabot continued, recalling her note to Beland. “ ‘And the person I thought was his biological father is not his biological father.' ”
From his home in Brenham, Texas, Beland, 61, said he didn't think too much of Chabot's correspondence until she included a link to a video of her son, Chris, performing at a church. He clicked on the video and suddenly, everything changed.
“My first impression was he looked exactly like my father and he looked a lot like my son, Tyler, who's 21,” Beland said, speaking with a distinct Midwestern accent that surfaces when he gets excited. “The similarity was just jaw-dropping.
“His vocal and his guitar playing were very similar to mine, and his mannerisms were similar to mine. The way that he looked and his actions were pretty amazing,” Beland said of Chris. “I told my girlfriend about it and she just said, ‘I don't think you even need a DNA test, it's so obvious. But go ahead, and let's see where it goes.' ”
Growing up in California
On Friday, a local singer-songwriter named Chris Beland will celebrate the release of his new album, “The Weather Man,” with a concert at The Kilns Bookstore in Bend (see “If you go”). He'll sing his lush, acoustic folk-pop songs, and he'll be backed by a band of close friends who for years have known him by a different name, Chris Chabot.
Chris, 31, grew up in Santa Maria, Calif., a midsize town on the state's central coast, where he lived with his mom, Barbara, an older brother and sister, and a man who left the family around the time Chris was born. Both Barbara and Chris believed that man was Chris' father for the past 31 years. (The man's last name was not Chabot. That name came from Barbara's second husband, who adopted Chris when he was 4.)
Chris never had much of a relationship with the man he thought was his biological father. He said earlier this week he has met the man a few times, and “shied away from getting to know him.”
Chris took an early interest in music; he remembers enjoying the sound of a record player's needle against a vinyl LP while wearing “footie pajamas.” He learned to play guitar at age 11, wrote songs at 13, and started a punk band at 14. By 15, he was a father himself. He married his son's mother and moved out of the house.
Over the next several years, Chris grew up fast. He eventually divorced his first wife, met and married his current wife, Annie, and had three more children. Fed up with their lifestyle in California, the family moved to Bend six years ago after Chris got a job over the phone as a kidney dialysis tech at a medical clinic in town.
Throughout his life, Chris has had a “deep-rooted need to know where he's from,” said his mother. So last spring, when he asked her for contact information for the man he thought was his dad, she handed it over.
Chris said he reached out not to build a relationship, but to learn about that side of his family, its health history and genetic makeup, and anything else he might need to know for his kids' sake.
The two men decided to put to rest long-standing uncertainty as to whether they were truly father and son. A paternity test came back negative. And Chris returned to his mother, looking for answers.
“I thought I was going to go to my grave not knowing who my dad is,” Chris said earlier this week.
Encouraging from afar
From the moment he was born, Chris was the “calmest, sweetest” kid, Barbara said.
“God gave me this perfect child,” she said. “We called him ‘Casual Chris.' That was on his (birthday cakes when he was 2 and 3 years old) ... because he was so cool about everything.”
In the wake of the negative paternity test, however, Chris was not so cool. He was agitated, unsure if he would ever know his real father. And Barbara didn't know what to tell him, until her sister reminded her of a night in 1978, when she got a baby sitter and set off into the night to be young and have fun during what she now calls a “very traumatic time” of her life.
That night, she watched Ricky Nelson perform, and after the show, she got to hang out backstage with Nelson's guitar player, John Beland, where the two drank beers and played guitar. She doesn't remember what happened after that.
Her fuzzy memory newly stoked, Barbara hit the Internet to search for Beland, worried that he had died in the plane crash that killed Nelson in 1985 and that Chris would never get the answers he wanted. But she found him alive and well in Texas. She sent him an e-mail, assuring him she didn't want anything from him, but simply to let him know that he might have a son in Oregon.
That's when Beland, who was preparing to go to Australia to produce a record, watched video of Chris and saw the face of his own father. He tracked down Chris' Facebook profile, “friended” him on Sept. 21, and began reading his updates, his interaction with Annie, and comments from his friends and family. Beland also visited Chris' MySpace page and read his bio, picking up on several phrases that sounded just like something he would say.
Soon, he began commenting on Chris' Facebook page, complimenting his music and offering guidance on manufacturing CDs and staging a release show, but never hinting that the advice might be from father to son.
“He had already gone through so many years of disappointments and wondering where he came from, if it had gone the other way, it would've been a tremendous letdown for him,” Beland said. “So I just approached him as a friend.”
On Sept. 22, Beland wrote on Chris' Facebook profile: “Really nice stuff ... good picking and very heartfelt writing. Good luck with your music, John Beland.” Chris replied: “Thanks for the encouragement!”
A connection is made
“Some random guy, he's in Australia, and he writes me these comments about how he likes my music and he bought my album, and I'm like, ‘Oh cool, thanks for listening,' ” Chris said. “Before I even knew any of this was going on, he knew. He and my mom were talking. So when she called me and told me that John Beland might be my dad, I was like, ‘The guy on Facebook?'
“I went online and I looked up pictures of him, and I was seeing myself in all these pictures,” Chris said. “It was the weirdest thing ever. So I wrote him and I said, ‘Dude, I know about you now, and I just want you to know that I don't want anything from you. If anything, I just want to have a friendship with you and get to know you.' ”
He describes Beland's reply as “the sweetest” e-mail: “He's like, ‘If you're my son, I'd be the most blessed person in the world. And if you're not, then you've gained a friend for life.' ”
The prospect of gaining Chris as a son made John Beland ecstatic. He agreed to a paternity test, which came back positive a week later, setting off a celebration in an Australian recording studio and a wave of relief for a young man in Bend, Oregon, not to mention his mom in Colorado.
“I'm so happy. I'm at peace. I feel like God answered my prayers,” Barbara said. “Chris has not just a father figure, but a friend, and someone he can respect and talk to. In 100 different ways, I feel this weight off my shoulders. It has been an albatross my whole life, and it's hard to float when you're got this weight pulling you down. I feel like somebody just cut that off and I don't have to carry it anymore.”
‘I finally feel whole'
“(When I got the results,) my jaw dropped,” John Beland said. “It was obviously very emotional, but also very exciting, (and) I felt a real need to make up for all of those years that he spent not knowing, and all the years that he spent (without) a real father. I felt bad that we both missed those years, but I picked up the phone and called him, and it was a bit of a hard call to make because, you know, where do you start?”
Chris soon found out that his father knew just how to start. He and John talked for hours. “He's really funny,” Chris said. “He has the gift of gab.”
Chris learned he has other siblings all over the country, including a sister in New York he now talks to regularly, and a younger brother with whom he has “really connected,” he said. Plus there is a gang of Belands who have embraced him fully, as evidenced by their many friendly Facebook comments.
But the key component of this happy story is that a son knows his father, and a father knows his son. And both finally feel more complete than they did before.
“It's life-changing,” Chris said. “I feel like I've gotten my other leg. I feel like I've been crippled my whole life, and I finally feel whole.”
That feeling couldn't have come at a better time, he said.
“I can be on the rock bottom and still be smiling because I'm just so happy,” Chris said. “This has changed my perspective. No matter how hard life gets, I've come to this turn in my life where things are making sense.
“It's been a rough year,” he said, “but it's been the best year at the same time.”
For John, the past couple of months have been an unexpected highlight of a lifetime packed with triumphs.
“Just when you think you've experienced about all you could in the world, something like this comes along and everything else pales,” he said. “I've achieved a lot in the music business over the years, and I'm thankful for that, but those were all fleeting moments.
“People have a hard time understanding that all that stuff — Dolly Parton and Ricky Nelson, doing TV, traveling around the world in jets, staying at big hotels, doing Carnegie Hall — all that stuff was all wonderful, but they were really just fleeting moments. But a situation like this is something that will stay with me for the rest of my life. So just when you think life couldn't offer much more than what you've experienced, along comes this gigantic thing that makes everything else just look so unimportant.”
Meeting for the first time
Chris is in the process of legally changing his last name from Chabot to Beland to formally recognize his new relationship with John. And on Monday, father and son will meet for the first time after John's plane lands at Redmond Municipal Airport. When Chris scheduled his CD-release show, John “couldn't stay away,” he said.
Both men are excited and nervous about the meeting.
“I think it's going to be one of those times when you have to kind of hop on the surfboard and push your way into the waves,” John said. “However it goes, it's going to be a very loving and wonderful time.
“This is going to be one amazing Christmas for me, and I hope it is for Chris, too,” he said.
Instead of letting the intense emotions of the coming moment get to him, Chris is choosing to put his wry sense of humor on display.
“I am going to see my Dad for the first time face to face in 4 days,” read his Facebook status on Thursday night. “I might stand at the airport with a cardboard sign that says ‘DAD.' ”
Ben Salmon can be reached at 541-383-0377 or bsalmon@bendbulletin.com.
