Musician, artist Josh Chambers dies
Washington County native, 45, removed from life support after three weeks in a coma
Josh Chambers, a Washington County native and Saratoga Springs resident whose artistic fecundity and superabundance of gifts across multiple creative disciplines awed collaborators and audiences alike, died Friday in California, where he was recording a new album.
Chambers, 45, was removed from life support at the request of his parents after three weeks in a coma following unexplained bleeding in his brain, according to the friend he was staying with.
“He was an explosion of talent,” said the local singer-songwriter Val Haynes, who has performed under the name Lonesome Val for four decades and was Chambers’ cousin. The two had planned to collaborate on recording some of her songs later this year in his apartment and studio in Saratoga Springs, she said.
A playwright, actor, director, composer, lyricist, guitarist, pianist, collage artist, music producer and sound engineer, among other hats he wore, Chambers’ output also included an estimated 750 songs. As a point of professional pride and believing it spurred creativity, Chambers gave himself a 90-minute deadline to write a song, according to Jeff Knight, a close friend for 15 years who lives with his wife and children outside Palm Springs, Calif.
Chambers had been with the family since late November, an extended visit during which he was working on an album of his original music with a band including Pete Hayes, drummer of the band The Figgs, founded in Saratoga Springs in 1987; Knight’s 20-year-old daughter, Isabella Mcknight, who sings on the album; and son Gavin Mcknight, 18, who plays guitar.
“He told my kids, ‘If you want to be creative, give yourself a time limit,” Knight said. “I think almost every song he wrote was done in an hour and a half.”
“Josh was brilliant and smart on so many levels,” said Jason Baker, friends with Chambers since their Greenwich childhood. They became close, Baker said, over a shared sense of being creative outsiders in a rural community.
“We were the weird kids, sitting in the basement, listening to music, talking about Oscar Wilde and Aldous Huxley and Jack Kerouac and (Allen) Ginsberg, reading Jim Morrison’s poetry and listening to The Doors and exploring mind-expanding things,” said Baker, who became one of the Capital Region’s most creative chefs at a series of restaurants from 2007 to 2014.
“Josh treated me like an artist and pushed me as hard artistically as anybody else ever has,” said Baker, now a chef in New Hampshire. “But he was also such a great friend, and I know a lot of people felt that way.”
Chambers, whom Baker described as “a guitar god in high school, playing eight hours a day,” first drew wider attention in the late 1990s with Fovea Floods, a bold theater company he co-founded as a student at Skidmore College. (Another founder was Jon Bernthal, whose acting career includes playing the title character in the Netflix series “The Punisher,” which shot scenes in Albany in 2018.)
Reviewing Fovea Floods’ 1998 production of a show called “Paul Pry” that Chambers wrote and directed, Michael Eck, reviewing for the Times Union, wrote, “(It) is the most fun, most challenging pieces of theater you will see in the Capital Region this year,” adding, that it was a “madhouse of masks, music, blood, sex, terror and hilarity.”
The company moved to Brooklyn after members graduated. Chambers began a music and theater career in New York and
Los Angeles that included a master’s degree in theater direction from the California Institute of the Arts, north of L.A.
Besides Donnelly, artists he worked with, according to published reports and what friends managed to glean—chambers was famously loath to name-drop— included actors Marisa Tomei, Ed Asner, Danny Glover, Cecily Strong, Allison Brie, Val Kilmer (who played Jim Morrison in a film about The Doors) and Keanu Reeves.
“He didn’t like to talk about (Reeves), because of how it might sound, but I know they were friends,” said Knight. The celebrity actor, who was the bass player for a 1990s band called Dogstar, reached out to Chambers after seeing a Chambers-directed Calarts production of “Book of Tink,” a theater work for which Chambers wrote the music when it had its world premiere at Skidmore in 1999 and was remounted in California, Knight said.
Chambers felt passionately, in his work and in his life. Neutrality and indifference were not among his traits, according to friends and as evidenced by his artistic output, the persona he created on social media and the seemingly grim perspective it conveyed. Almost every photo he posted on Instagram starting in 2018 had the words “We F--k” emblazoned on them, for example, thought it wasn’t clear why, and the photos invariably are grainy, with subjects as varied as a ceramic cat, Chambers holding a raw steak, Chambers looking tormented and/or injured, a palm full of prescription pills, alcohol bottles, a red sofa and a 50-pound bag of rock salt.
“He was one of the most misunderstood people I’ve ever known,” said Baker. (Knight used the same word when talking about Chambers.)
Speaking of the photos, Baker said, “That was Josh finding beauty in things a lot of people would consider grotesque. He just didn’t look at the world that way. That was one of the best things about that man: He was operating on a different plane.”
Chambers was open about his struggles with mental illness, on occasion posting photos of prescription bottles in his name for anti-anxiety medication and discussing the matter with family and some friends.
“I’m not ashamed or embarrassed to say I understood because it was another bond we shared,” said Haynes, his cousin and fellow musician. “I know he dealt with it for a long time.”
Such knowledge became more public in summer 2016, when Chambers had a falling out with the controversial singersongwriter Michelle Shocked. After meeting in L.A., the two stayed at his parents’ home for more than a month while working on music for upstate concerts designed to revive her career after public outcry a few years earlier over comments she made that were perceived as antigay.
Chambers defended Shocked and championed her music. But their relationship fractured while in the Capital Region that summer, they battled on social media, including photos posted by Shocked showing Chambers’ medications, and matters culminated with Shocked staging a protest outside a Saratoga venue while Chambers and others were inside preparing for what was to have been Shocked’s own concert.
“That hurt him deeply. I know he had PTSD from that,” said Knight.
But, mostly, Knight said, “He didn’t show my family that side of him. It was all pure love.”
The feelings extended to the family’s aged dog Mukluk, a Xoloitzcuintle, or Mexican hairless breed. Mukluk is, according to Knight, ugly, obese, half-blind and missing most of its teeth.
“That was his favorite of our dogs,” said Knight. “Of course it was.”
Speaking in the background of her father’s phone interview, Isabella Mcknight volunteered that, in ancient Mexico, Xolos were often sacrificed with their owners because they were believed to help guide souls during the journey to the afterlife.
“In Josh’s universe, that makes sense,” said Knight.
Chambers, Knight’s children and the rest of the band recorded, in just four days, all of the dozen songs selected for the album, Knight said.
While not yet clear on the scope of post-production arrangements Chambers had already made for finishing the album, tentatively titled “I’m a Divorce,” Knight said he hopes it will be released online later this year.
Born Nov. 22, 1975, in Greenwich, Chambers graduated from Greenwich
High School in 1994, Skidmore in 1998 and Calarts in 2006. He is known to be survived by his parents, Betty and Joe Chambers of Greenwich, and a brother, Mike, who lives in the Capital Region.
Chambers’ parents were returning from California on Saturday, according to Haynes and Knight, and could not be reached for details about services or other memorials.
““Josh was brilliant and smart on so many levels. We were the weird kids, sitting in the basement, listening to music, talking about Oscar Wilde and Aldous Huxley and Jack Kerouac and (Allen) Ginsberg, reading Jim Morrison’s poetry and listening to The Doors and exploring mind-expanding things.” Jason Baker, friends with Josh Chambers since their childhood in Greenwich