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2025 Ohio Artist Registry Juried Exhibition
Chris Till
Musical Director Toadstool ShadowChillicothe Ohio 45601 United States Home Phone: (937) 767-2326 Website: https://www.toadstoolshadow.com/
Bio
Toadstool Shadow is a family-friendly Americana trio from southern Ohio. Their songs are about glad things like horses, cowgirls, mermaids, potatoes, and corn. They mix music and humor and sing everything in sunshine sweet two-part female harmony. Since 2023, they’ve performed at many Ohio festivals, including Lancaster Festival, Columbus ComFest, Bainbridge’s Fall Festival of Leaves, Mt. Sterling Summer Jam, Lithopolis Honeyfest, Frankfort Sunflower Festival, Spring Valley Potato Festival, as well as Dogwood Pass Old West Town in Beaver and Kalahari Resort in Sandusky.
Artist Statement
In his songs, Chris Till seamlessly synthesizes the serious, the silly, and the surreal. Why? Because that is how he experiences life.
He is the founder of Toadstool Shadow, a theatrical folk music trio from Chillicothe, Ohio. As Toadstool Shadow’s songwriter and scriptwriter, Till’s weds the wholesome and the weird. This musical marriage mixes Norman Rockwell’s traditionalism and Lewis Carroll’s surrealism.
Many of Till’s songs fall into one of four categories: fairy tale songs; updated nursery rhymes; updated proverbs; and songs blending children’s music with surrealism.
Fairy Tale Songs
Toadstool Shadow began as a vehicle for Till’s fairy tale opera about a lost bunny’s encounter with the fairy realm. “Mermaid Shantey” provides a glimpse into a mermaid’s life, as she too glimpses a human’s life (“she can see your feet, as you wade into her emerald queendom”). Similarly, “When Faeries Sprout Wings” ponders how faeries spend their time, just as they, in turn, ponder how humans spend their time. These songs show the long shadow that the Brothers Grimm cast over Till’s imagination.
Nursery Rhyme Songs
A handful of Till’s songs revisit the darker themes of Mother Goose. Though peculiar to the modern sensitive perspective, Mother Goose exhibited a blithely comic view of mortality in pieces like “Three Blind Mice.” Similarly, Till’s song “Tiny the Frog” details the ill-fated meeting of a friendly fly with a famished frog (“our common fate is on another’s plate”). “Who Wants the Cheese?” recounts a house mouse’s unfortunate fondness for entrapped cheese (“it’s a small price to pay for the refined gourmet”).
Proverbs
Some of Till’s songs turn conventional proverbs upside down. The titles alone of these songs express their themes: “The Apple Who Fell Far from the Tree” and “The Old Dog Who Learned a New Trick.” Till focuses on musically proving that there is an exception to every rule.
Surreal Children’s Music
Some of Till’s songs defy easy categorization. Are they children’s songs? Or are the surreal grownup songs? “I’ve Got Friends” describes the singer’s collection of friends: a walrus named Russ who lives on the wall, a penguin named Gwen who lives in his pen, and a buck named It who lives in his bucket. In Till’s “My Airplane,” the listener is invited to fly in the singer’s airplane, which is full of ‘Aztec priests and mythical beasts,’ ‘paisley seats and a horn that beeps,’ among other phantasmagoria. Like the Beatles “Yellow Submarine,” it is unclear if these songs are for kids or grownups. In truth, they are for both.
As a songwriter, Till’s standard themes highlight the unusual, the atypical, and the exceptions in life. By freely mixing the serious, the silly, and the surreal, Till hopes to communicate to all ages that that is exactly what life is.