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Music Saved His Life

It’s been a busy couple of months for Christian Opus Lawrence.

The full-time professional touring musician spent three weeks on tour promoting Capital Conspiracy, the new album with his band Dead by Wednesday. Then it was three weeks in Germany playing drums with his Black Sabbath Tribute Band, Earth, on the Lords of the Earth Euro Tour. Then it was the long flight from Frankfurt and back to Connecticut where he grew up, and where–when he’s back home here–he hosts a weekly trivia game at the Country Tavern in Guilford.

Back home, he spent some quality time with his son Orion and his life partner Jessica, and then there was a mad dash to the airport, where he just barely missed his flight to California. But he was able to get on the next flight, where he rejoined his Dead By Wednesday bandmates for their gig playing in the Mojave Dessert as part of the Wasteland Weekend, billed as the world’s largest post-apocalyptic Mad Max-style festival and party in the desert. On Sept. 30 his band Dead By Wednesday, tucked in between the RaVen Collective and Wretched Embers, played the Wasteland Weekend mainstage. Then he headed back here to Connecticut for a huge family dinner to celebrate his son’s birthday, and, after that, it was back on the road with his Black Sabbath tribute band for a music festival in New York.

Then he’s headed back to Guilford, where he will host a discussion about his new memoir, Break When I’m Dead, during a family-friendly event at Breakwater Books, 81 Whitfield Street, Guilford on Thursday, Oct. 13 from 7 to 8 p.m. Those who are interested in going should call the bookstore at 203-453-4141 or email them at breakwaterbks@gmail.com.

As you might guess from this introduction, the guy’s got an interesting story to tell.

Leaving A Legacy

You might think that me and Opus, we don’t have that much in common. But shortly after we start talking over Zoom, me from Connecticut and him from Germany, we laugh about the fact that both of us had parents that considered concerts a gateway drug. My parents also considered wearing jeans a gateway drug. My rebellion was that I would sneak around the corner to my friend Mimi’s house and change into jeans before going to school.

Opus took his rebellion a step further. While a middle school student in Guilford, he immersed himself in Mötley Crüe’s “Shout at the Devil” and taught himself how to play drums. He didn’t just go see bands, he became part of the band.

We also, both of us, we love our kids. In fact, Opus’s love for Orion is what prompted him to write his new book.

“I want him to know the truth about his dad. I want him to know why I did what I did, who I am, and that I want to leave him some kind of legacy,” he says. “And it’s not just for him. I also kind of wanted to do it for any aspiring musicians, anyone who really wants to do this for a living. Really, I think if you want to do this for a living, you need a reality check, and then, whether you decide that’s good or bad, you know what it takes.”

His book, he says, explains all the trials and tribulations of being a pro touring musician on the road. The schedule is grueling; there are long stretches of time spent away from loved ones. It’s not easy. If you want to make a living at this, you’re going to have to learn how to juggle, probably play in more than one band, likely a cover band, along with a bunch of other gigs, from television appearances to hosting trivia games.

But there are benefits. He says becoming a musician saved his life.

“My friends would be off smoking crack in the woods. I was at home playing drums. I had a goal, a mission. I hope my son has the same things,” he says. He eschews hard drugs and has not had a drink in five years, he says. “I’ve lost so many friends to drinking and driving. I lost so many friends to heroin, to overdoses. These days you don’t even know what you’re getting. You do one line and you’re dead.”

Other benefits? When it comes to being a heavy metal musician, he says, the fans are intensely loyal. “It’s not just doom and gloom for no reason,” he says. “It’s a sisterhood and a brotherhood. Once you have a fan, you have a fan for life.” And, on a practical level, “that means you will always get a certain amount of tickets sold, a certain amount of albums sold.”

In addition to older fans, he says, heavy metal tends to go through cycles where it garners new ones. The Netflix show Stranger Things Season Four finale featured Metallica’s song “Master of Puppets.”

“People who used to make fun of me for playing it are now listening to it,” he says.

A Bright Future Turns Dark

Before Opus was a middle school student teaching himself how to play drums, he and his mom and older brother lived in New Haven. Both he and his brother had been born in Italy, where his biological father was from and met his mother. When Opus was just a baby and his brother was about four, the family moved to the United States. But things didn’t work out with his parents and his dad left.

“My mother told me my father was dead,” says Opus. “And then later, then I saw him in Pepe’s Pizza, like, ‘oh, it must be a miracle.’”

After his father left, their mother was a single mom trying to raise a family on Ferry Street in New Haven, where they were one of the few white families. Opus says he and his brother were tormented at the bus stop and in school because they were different, and his brother would try to defend him and get beat up. His mother eventually met the man who would become their step-father.

But what seemed like a bright future for the family soon turned dark. His stepfather would drink and, when left alone with the boys, would take them to Irish bars, get drunk, and then swerve home with them in the back seat, terrified. He eventually quit drinking, went to law school, and got a law degree. Again, the family seemed like it was on a better path. They moved to Sachem’s Head in Guilford.

“We had a good four to five years,” Opus says. “We would jog together in the morning. We would go on Caribbean vacations. We lived in nice houses.” His stepfather said he would adopt the two boys, a step he never completed, and insisted they convert to his religion. Again, Opus says, this was harder on his older brother Michael. Opus said Michael would openly rebel and his stepfather would hit him. Opus tried to get along and then just disappear into his music. “I had drums. I had a goal. I had a mission. Michael was just a full-on rebel at a young age.”

The family’s fortunes changed once again, Opus says, when he was a teenager. His stepfather started becoming even more successful and then started acting “like he was a John Gotti,” a gangster wanting too much, too fast, too soon.

“It was like everything wasn’t real. There was the Maserati that he bought on credit. The Ferrari that belonged to a friend of his that he borrowed. He would get paid in cocaine. He would cheat on my mother with different people and all these things…he lost his license. He lost his family. He lost everything, and he lives in a shelter somewhere. I feel bad for him. I went to visit him a few years ago when Orion was first born, and where I went I never want to go back again. I don’t want Orion to witness what I witnessed. So that’s a closed door. That’s a chapter that is done. And I feel bad.”

Different Paths

While Opus continued to build his career in music and went off to college, he saw his older brother, his super smart, straight-A’s-in-school brother who defended him at the bus stop when they were kids, go in a different direction. Opus says Michael left home to become a roadie for a hardcore punk band that was a magnet for racist skinheads. “He was looking for something to believe in and looking for a cause to fight for,” Opus says. “He found hardcore punk music.”

Opus clarifies that the connection between certain kinds of music and virulent racism is complicated and nuanced. There are skinheads, and then there are racist skinheads, he says. His brother, unfortunately, got involved with the latter.

“He started going on the road with them and they would travel to the Midwest, to Texas and they were messing around with all of these drugs. He started hanging out with these people who prey on lost youth. They turn them into street thugs and brainwash him into thinking he was part of a family, like we’ll take care of you. He was fed a lot of lies, a lot of hate.”

Opus is not defending his brother, but, rather, trying to find a way to understand why two brothers from the same family, who both loved music, took such different paths. His brother eventually became the leader of a group called the Hammerhead Skins, a group that was at one point identified by the Anti-Defamation League as “the most violent and best-organized neo-Nazi skinhead group in the United States,” with members convicted of harassing, beating, and murdering the people they targeted for their skin color, ethnicity, or some other perceived difference. The group also regularly sponsored concerts.

Michael Lawrence ended up in prison, according to a report from the Southern Poverty Law Center, after being convicted of being one of a group that defaced a synagogue, brutalized Black people and Latinos, and committed other racist acts. He then became associated with a variety of other violent racist groups. Opus says his brother then got married to someone who wasn’t a skinhead, had a daughter who later came out as gay, and renounced violence. Michael split from his first wife, met the daughter of David Duke, a man who is “the American face of white nationalism and pseudo-academic anti-semetism,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.” That daughter had already emancipated herself from her extremist family. Opus says his brother is now “everything Jesus Christ. So every time I talk with him, he’s preaching to me.”

Opus explicitly rejects racism, is offended by stereotypes, and plays with band members that happen to represent a variety of ethnicities and skin colors. His extended family includes not only his formerly racist extremist brother and his wife, but also his gay niece, along with relatives who are half-Black, half-Jewish, half-Italian, and Puerto Rican. I tell him it sounds like a uniquely American family.

“So I always joke around. I’m like, yeah, we’ll have a family reunion. And we’ll invite the David Duke family with my Black family, my Puerto Rican family, my Jewish family, and my Italian family,” he says. “And we’ll see what happens.”

‘Go For It, Full Tilt’

If Opus has music to thank for saving his life, he also admits it can be a crazy way to make a living. That’s the other message he has for anyone who wants to cultivate a creative life, particularly with music. He says the music business now is not what it was 20 years ago.

“It is almost impossible to make a living from just playing music by itself,” he says. “So you have to find creative ways to do it. That might mean you DJ. Maybe you host a trivia night. Maybe you also become an actor and play music on TV or Broadway. Maybe you do musicals. Maybe you teach lessons, become a music teacher. Maybe you subsidize your playing with a cover band or a tribute band like I do. Become a hired gun, a studio musician like I did for years playing with bigger cats, like I did with David Ellefson from Megadeath. You have to learn to wear many hats. And you have to learn sometimes to be a yes-man. So someone calls you and they have this gig and you take on the freelance gig. And you have to if you want to be your own boss.”

Yes, it’s been a hustle, but he says it’s worth it. Sure, he says maybe he’s slowed down a bit. Sometimes his work makes his body hurt. He recently has taken up yoga. But he says he’ll be ready to take a break when he’s dead, hence the title of his book.

“You realize you’re only on this rock for a short amount of time. You know, you have to stand for something. If you have a passion. Go for it. Full tilt. Don’t stop.”