Puente

*January 9 2008 issue of "Spotlight on Entertainment" (Cover Story)

*July 2008 Issue of "Texas Highways" (Photo and Mention)

*December 2008 Issue of "Texas Live" (Photo)

"...Puente's a "roots" band... not "roots rock", just ROOTS... they do REAL ROOTS MUSIC... I'm talking AMERICA, here, folks..."The Grapes of Wrath", or a blues bar in the backwaters of the French Quarter in New Orleans pre-Katrina... or in a hobo camp in the Thirties, or at one of the dances my granny took me to as a young child, or in the Cotton Club in Harlem in NYC in the fifties...could've been the 1890s, the 1930s, the Fifties, or last night...I LOVE PUENTE..."
~ Mick Darwin

"This is from the heart of the real feeling of how music is supposed to be done...This is where you really express yourself"
~Stevo (KEOS 89.1 FM)

I just sent you a selected message for the Sonicbids Spotlight (yay!) and I loved your songs so much that I forgot to check your calendar...
~Aimee (spotlights@sonicbids.com)

"...This project looks fun."
~Eliot E. Rich (Bookings and Event Management, Castaways. Ithaca, NY)

"I would definitely call it Delta Blues."
~Edison Freeman (Recording Engineer, Musician)

“I would like to introduce you to Chris Puente. Chris is a fun, entertaining and dynamic performer. He is very original and insightful. I have known Chris and seen him perform for several years and he just keeps getting better. He would be a great fit in any music program.”
~Graham Warwick(Blues Man, Booking Agent)

“Hints of ragtime and swing co-mingle in a solid folk rock blues sauce to serve up a distinct and tasty dish we call “Progressive Americana a la Puente”
~Victoria Winters (Writer, Artist) - Texas Hiways, Texas Live, Booking Agent, Recording Engineer.....

Chris Puente still pursuing music despite dealing with brain tumor

A Beautiful Mind(Cover Story)
Bryan Eagle
Chris Puente still pursuing music despite dealing with brain tumor

By JANET PHELPS
Eagle Staff Writer
It's strange being told you have a 5-centimeter brain tumor.

Local musician Chris Puente knows what it's like. Nearly three years ago, doctors discovered Puente had a level 2 central neurocytoma during an emergency-room visit, he said. In layman's terms, Puente was told he had a brain tumor.

The 32-year-old traveling musician had known for a while that something was wrong, he said in an interview with The Eagle last week.
While traveling in New Zealand in late 2005, a poisonous spider bit him. He started having dizzy spells and vision problems. By the time he returned to the U.S., his field of vision had shrunk to the size of a dime, Puente said, motioning with his thumb and forefinger to show the size of what he could see.
He kept telling himself his symptoms were caused by the spider bite.
But he put off going to the hospital because he was afraid it might be something more serious.

In the spring of 2006, as he was driving by on Villa Maria Road in Bryan, Puente said his legs and arms involuntarily curled up. He couldn't move them, and he couldn't hold the steering wheel, he said.
By that time, Puente said, "in the back of my mind, I know it's not a spider bite."
He sat by the side of the road for 15 minutes until he could move again, and went to the emergency room later that day.
Three weeks later, doctors removed about half the existing tumor. It was too dangerous, he said, to remove the rest.

Puente's life was drastically different when he was released from St. Joseph Regional Health Center in Bryan a month later. He had little control over his right arm, trouble saying certain words and severe memory loss, he said.
But the most devastating thing, Puente said, was that doctors told him he might never play the guitar again.

It came as a blow to Puente, who has spent his entire life playing music.
He started out playing the mountain dulcimer when he was 7 and picked up the guitar three years later, Puente said.
As a kid, he dreamed of being a rock star.
His family moved frequently because of his father's job as a construction worker. His deeply religious parents would take Puente and his younger brother into churches in every town they passed through to play and sing songs.
As a high school student in Navasota, Puente joined a rock band that played at bars in Northgate in College Station, he said. He dropped out of high school a month into his senior year to concentrate on music, he said.
Since then, Puente's been playing and traveling nonstop.

All that came to a halt when he left the hospital in Bryan in spring 2006.
He remembers sitting in a hospital bed dying of thirst and unable to say the word water.
"All I could say was 'Um, um, um,'" Puente recalled. "It was so frustrating."
The only thing that got him through those hard days, Puente said, was support from his friends.
Local bar-owner Rola Cerone offered Puente her home throughout his recovery, he said. And Amira Poporina, a friend who lives in New Zealand (and plays with Puente in a duet they call Diddly Deux) flew to the U.S. to be with Puente during his recovery.
Porporina would play or sing Puente's songs for him, trying to jog his memory so he could remember the songs he used to play.

"My only goal was to be able to play again," Puente said. "I've lived, breathed, ate music since I was a kid. That's all I've known."
But when he tried to play, Puente's right arm would shoot up into the air involuntarily. He couldn't control his fingers, and he couldn't make himself strum the guitar.
"It was very, very difficult," he said. "But I had nothing else to do."
Puente practiced for hours each day for two months. He slowly regained his ability to play the guitar and remember his songs, he said.
The hard work paid off, and his first show after his surgery was in August 2006.

And, Puente hasn't taken a break since that first step, he said.
Although he's still recovering, Puente has been traveling across the United States, spending just a few months at what he considers his home base, a ranch in Plantersville.

Since August, Puente has been touring with Philadelphia percussionist Mike Huebner.
But he's ready for a break to write new material and spend time at home, he said.

Puente's struggle with cancer has dramatically altered his outlook on life, he said. He has stopped worrying about the small details of day-to-day living.
Although doctors told Puente it would be just a matter of time before his cancer returned, he's opted against additional treatment.
It just isn't worth it, Puente said.
"With or without treatment, it's the same life," he said. "I'd rather live my life free and happy."

He added that it's scary thinking about how the tiny tumor in his brain is growing slowly. But what's more terrifying, he said, is the thought of dying before he gets to make his mark in music history.
"I've seen so much in my life, If I died tomorrow, I'd have lived a full life for almost everyone I know," he said. "What scares me most [is] I haven't achieved what I want to achieve yet." - Bryan Eagle