Cranston native and Los Angeles resident Chris Chianesi uses his creative talents in a variety of facets. He has extensive experience in the musical theater, improv and sketch comedy mediums and for the past few years he’s been transitioning that into songwriting. Chianesi has amassed a prolific output of comedy songs and he just released a concept album about a member of the Royal Family. It’s titled “Prince Harry: Live! At Coachella,” which reimagines the Duke of Sussex as a mainstream popstar. The full-length record was released on Oct. 18, and it’s already being embraced by Chianesi’s massive social media following.

We recently had a talk about how the idea for the album came about, his theatrical experiences in Rhode Island and what he hopes to connect with people when they give “Prince Harry: Live! At Coachella” a listen.

Rob Duguay: How did you initially come up with the idea to do this musical that’s focused on Prince Harry? Was it finding humor in the way the Royal Family is portrayed in pop culture or was it something else?

Chris Chianesi: It kind of started without the idea of writing a show at all. His book “Spare” came out almost two years ago and I was seeing a lot about it in the news. He had done the Oprah [Winfrey] special and he had this Netflix show with Meghan Markle, so I was curious because I was seeing all the clickbait online about the salacious things he mentioned in the book, which kind of touches on all the family drama and everything. I didn’t really know that much about the Royal Family before I read the book, so I started reading it. I’m a songwriter and I do musical comedy and I’ve performed in clubs for years in New York while writing songs about pop culture and what’s going on at the moment.

As I was reading the book, I just realized that it had so many ripe moments to write songs about. It was so filled with drama, musicality and a potential for music comedy, so I just started writing songs on my own with no goal in mind. I was hanging out with a friend one day where I live in Los Angeles, and she had mentioned to me that she had done the Hollywood Fringe Festival the year before. That was the first moment that sparked in me that I should try to put these songs on their feet and see if there’s anything there. At that point, I had a couple songs written already, maybe three or four, but at that moment I entered the Hollywood Fringe.

I got a theater and everything, but the show had not been written yet, so I signed up to do the festival. I work great under intense deadlines like that, and the festival started in June. At this point, it was March when I signed up to do the festival and I set a goal to write one song per week and fully produce the track with the lyrics and everything else. As I was writing the songs, I came up with the concept of placing Prince Harry as this larger than life version of himself performing as a popstar at Coachella. I shaped the show around that notion, and within a couple months I had a show that was on its feet at the Hollywood Fringe.

We sold out every performance and I had no idea how it was going to be received because it’s a very wacky show. It’s kind of a silly notion to make Prince Harry out to be a popstar, but I did it while wearing a red wig and performing as myself. It was received really well and it went really great.

RD: What was the atmosphere like during your performance at the Hollywood Fringe and how did you go about making the album afterwards?

CC: The theater was set up like a concert experience at Coachella and the audience was free, cheering throughout and they were dancing and stuff. After the Hollywood Fringe, I performed it once more at another festival in Santa Monica. I did some rewrites, I wrote some more songs and I performed it again this past January in Hollywood. After that, I decided that I had all the songs that I wanted for the show, I had 17 songs at that point. People had been asking me for months to release an album of it because they loved the songs so much, so this summer I buckled down.

I record all of my songs at home. I have a home studio setup with my microphone where I write and produce everything on my own. I recorded the album from May to July, then I got it mixed and it was ready to be put out into the world. I’m excited to finally have it out.

RD: That’s awesome. Since November of 2018, you’ve written, performed and produced over 175 comedy songs, which you previously alluded to, while amassing millions of views on Instagram and TikTok. What would you say influenced you to pursue this artform? When I think of comedy songs, I think of Weird Al Yankovic, so did his career play a part?

CC: Oh yeah, I’ve always loved Weird Al growing up, I love his songs, his music and his vibe. I kind of got into musical comedy through the world of musical theater and sketch comedy. I went to college to study musical theater at New York University and I spent years after graduation working in theater, performing in regional shows and on cruise ships. It was really, really fun, but I kind of realized at a certain point that I wanted to perform my own work while having my own creative control on it. I wanted to put out original stuff into the world that had my own creative stamp on it that I grew organically.

In 2017, I entered another festival in New York City called Solocom, which is at the Peoples Improv Theater. This was before I had released any songs, music videos or anything, this was my very first thing. I signed up for the festival, because I work well with a deadline, and I had a couple of weeks to put a show together. I wrote about 10 songs for that show, I taught myself how to use the music producing software, I did it all myself and the show was a huge success. That was the impetus for me realizing that I could really do this, people think I’m good, I think I’m good and I have something to say with a fresh and unique perspective.

That was the catalyst and since then, I was able to write and produce. I learned how to edit videos, making music videos, which I thought was an easy way of getting my stuff out there too. On social media, the length of videos isn’t as long so I could write a 30 second song or one that’s a minute and a half long, get it online, do a rock & tumble music video with a green screen and get it out to as many people as possible.

RD: Going along with what you just mentioned with the roots of your craft being in musical theater, you performed at the Trinity Repertory Company in Providence and the Theatre By The Sea in Wakefield while growing up in Cranston. From being in those environments, how formative do you consider that time in your life when it comes to your current career?

CC: It was incredibly important. I first started performing at the Theatre By The Sea in 1999, where I performed in “Gypsy.” That experience from hanging out with all of these New York actors, some of them who had been on Broadway with amazing credits, was such a unique and formative experience. That was what actually made me want to go to school to study theater, there was somebody in the cast who went to NYU for musical theater and that was the minute where I set my sights on that goal. I must have been 11 or 12 at the time, I knew I wanted to go to NYU for musical theater, so that’s what started it.

I always loved making friends with all the professional actors, people from New York and also the people from Rhode Island who were incredibly talented in the theater scene. I was fortunate enough to perform in “A Christmas Carol” one year at Trinity Rep, and that was another wonderful experience. I also performed in “The Cider House Rules,” which was a two-part, six hour theatrical experience with very heavy adult material, but I learned a lot from it. I always knew that I wanted to do it from a young age and I’m very fortunate that Rhode Island had so many opportunities to perform, put myself out there and meet all of these incredible people.

RD: With the following you’ve gotten from the live shows of “Prince Harry: Live! At Coachella,” I’m willing to bet that some people are going to tell their friends who aren’t familiar with it about the album. What do you hope to accomplish with those folks who are going to hear about the record through word of mouth?

CC: I always tell people that with the show, it’s for all people. It’s for the people who love the Royal Family and love following them. It’s made for people who love “The Crown” and it’s made for people who know nothing about the Royal Family. You can go into the show while having heard nothing about Prince Harry and still love it and become obsessed with it. The show is about this one person who is exploring themes about identity, family, love and legacy while trying to make sense of the world he’s in, which is a genuinely human experience that a lot of people can relate to.

It also doesn’t hurt that the songs are really, really good, if I do say so myself. I’m so proud of this score, I’m so proud of the songs and it’s been such a creatively fulfilling experience making this because I stretch myself so much as a songwriter and as a music producer. I’m just so proud of all of these songs and people love the music when they hear it. I love writing earworms that get stuck in people’s heads and they’ll be singing for weeks, months or however long. That’s always my goal when I first start writing songs because that’s what I look for in music.

I look for catchy hooks and very memorable, fun, cool, interesting and unique lyrics & melodies.