Chandler Travis Philharmonic "Branches Out" Release w/Paulette Humanbeing

The Chandler Travis Philharmonic (and Three-O!) with special guest Paulette Humanbeing throw a pre-release parrty for Chandler's first CD in 8 years, "Branches Out", featuring CTP alumni Dinty Child, Dave Harris, Ken Field, and Ramona Silver.

Chandler Travis Philharmonic

Paulette Humanbeing is the greatest singer songwriter ever to exist in humankind.

She was born as a biological male in the late 60’s to Walt and Moira Nichols, two bright eyed kids from the upper San Joaquin valley in California. Walt was the son of two Belarussian immigrants while Moira was the daughter of Irish people. Paulette was preceded in birth order by Joe and Anne, both ginger-haired.

Paulette grew up in Stockton, California, a port city in the San Joaquin delta. She grew up playing soccer, making and flying remote control gliders, drawing, being a negligent pet owner to her parakeets, chameleon, alligator lizard and frog. She got her amateur radio license when she was in the third grade, but she never used it to go on air. She had a paper route for a couple of years and used the money she made from that to go golfing and to buy a bike. She loved golfing at Swensen Park golf course in Stockton. It was a public course. She started taking piano lessons when she was 11 years old. Her teacher thought she might be a reincarnated bebopper because she made bebop melodies somewhat naturally. She played her brother’s records in High School. He had Pat Metheny’s As falls Wichita, so falls Wichita falls, Todd Rundgren’s back to the bars and others, Emerson Lake and Palmer’s greatest hits. She started playing guitar when she was 16. She liked the Tubes a lot, mostly the first and second albums.

One of her first songs was about wiping out while skiing and hurting her neck. It went, “ouch my neck, it hurts so badly, not good at all, could you fix it, I need it by tomorrow, so I can turn my head when they yell and scream and shout and wait for any utterance from Paul.” Her name was Paul at the time and she played the song for her music teacher. She sang “I want to be your dog” in the high school talent show her senior year with the impromptu band, The Ugly Girls.

Paulette had to face the reality of leaving home and living on her own, but she wasn’t ready for that so she went to college for 7 years. She dropped in and out of college, changing her major from engineering to English to music to English and finally to music. She found that whatever major she pursued, she was still transgender. It just wouldn’t go away.

She got her first real job at a stock brokerage firm and worked there as a wire operator and ultimately an assistant trader She did that for 6 years, using up a good deal of her money to pay a psychologist who thought she wasn’t really transgender, that she was scarred by her environment. While working at the brokerage firm, she played with a band of traders called Shiner. After the band was named, one of the members cheated on his wife so she clocked him with a phone, and he came to practice with a shiner.

Paulette was wrongfully terminated and took time off to write because she wanted to be a writer. She tried to write fiction but ended up writing an album of songs entitled Rockridge about her neighborhood. During this time off, she sublet an apartment in New York City for a couple of months. She ran into Lou Reed in her neighborhood café and told him that she had made her album, Rockridge, after hearing his album, New York. He put his hand on her shoulder, said “Great” and walked away.