Photographed at The Basement East
Anyone who says there's no danger left in rock 'n' roll hasn't seen Nashville savages Hans Condor ravage a stage. Look away and you might get hit by a flying guitar, chucked airborne by the band's menacing, frizzy-haired, rage-possessed frontman Charles "Chazz" Kaster. Keep too close an eye on the guitar and you might encounter Kaster himself, lunging his body into the crowd, ready to make a human bowling pin of any audience member not paying attention. But there was a period not all that long ago when Kaster's job was to protect and serve.
Hans Condor hit the Nashville scene circa 2007. And local rock scenesters who didn't know Kaster from seeing the band live might have known him from his nights slinging drinks at FooBar. By 2010, the punk rock road life was taking its toll. And, like many DIY Music City pavement-pounders, he'd become disillusioned with the grind of vying for visibility in a tough crowd.
"We used to book these ridiculous suicide tours — months [on the road with] no guarantees," he tells the Scene during a daytime sit-down at The Basement East, where he tends bar. Six years ago, while trekking through Colorado in the middle of a winter tour, the then-24-year-old got some unexpected news: He was going to have a kid. "It was a total freak-out moment for me," he recalls.
So Kaster enrolled at TSU and graduated in 2011 with a criminal justice degree. By the end of that year, Hans Condor was kaput. Still itching to travel, Kaster originally pursued a military career. He tried enlisting in the U.S. Air Force and bode his time working an internship with the Metro police department's auto theft unit. There, a detective encouraged him to apply for the force. By 2013 he found himself with no band, no military prospects and starting his first day at the police academy.
Military? Police academy? Aren't those the kinds of establishment oppressors a young punk is supposed to rail against? The irony of going from getting in the van to being The Man wasn't lost on Kaster.
"That was my thing," he recalls. " 'Fuck The Man, fuck the government, the whole establishment is corrupt.' I spent my entire adolescent life rebelling against that. ... I never thought I'd become a police officer. And I guess subconsciously maybe I put in the back of [my head] that I was a little interested in what it was actually like."
So what was it like?
"It's the most intense and boring job I've ever had," he says, laughing. "One minute you're just sitting there writing a report over someone [stealing] a VCR. ... The next thing you know, over the radio, someone just got murdered [and] you're driving up on the scene."
The decision also cost him friends.
"It is that stigmatized, but I totally understand," he says, sympathizing with nationwide outrage over recent police brutality controversies. But he's also gained empathy for the cops. "It's really hard being asked to make these split-second decisions on a daily basis and then have them scrutinized for months and months on end," he continues, recalling the extraordinary pressure of running through mental checklists of departmental and legal procedures while racing down the road at 100 mph in pursuit of murder suspects, adrenaline pumping.
This was the new rebellion he traded his punk rock past for. "I was running away from my problems," he says. But while the transition from rebel punk to stand-up cop was a gradual one for Kaster — a period, he says, he didn't even touch a guitar — the decision to turn in his badge and gun and get the band back together came literally overnight in the summer of 2014. "I woke up one day and thought, 'I don't wanna do this anymore, I wanna play rock 'n' roll.' "
With that he called Condor bassist Erik Holcombe, and in September 2014 the band returned to the stage."It felt so good that it was almost like a drug," he says. By March of last year, he'd left the force and gone back to bartending, rocking, rolling and, importantly, growing out his hair. "I missed my hair," he says with a laugh.
"Part of me thought I had to do this noble profession and be a fuckin' superhero for [my son]," Kaster says. "Because I was just a deadbeat. ... I overcorrected, and I kind of snapped out of it one day. "
That said, Kaster didn't go to the slaughterhouse and come back a vegetarian — he still identifies as anti-establishment, but now having witnessed the genuine passion of his former colleagues, he draws a distinction between the establishment and the individuals dedicating themselves in the trenches.
"[How] you dedicate yourself to music, well, they dedicate themselves to a career [where] they know they're not going to get paid much and it's dangerous and you're going to get yelled at and you're going to see the worst in people, like, every single day. ... They're the most honest, true individuals out there."
More From the 2016 People Issue
The Celebrity Chef: Maneet Chauhan / The Gold Medalist: Scott Hamilton / The Perception Changer: Kent Wallace / The Blogger: Melissa Watkins / The Biker Chaplain: Allen Tanner / The Man: Charles Kaster / The Islamic Leader: Rashed Fakhruddin / The Tubatroll: Joe Hunter / The Dog: Doug the Pug / The Emancipator Impersonator: Dennis Boggs / The Booker: Kathryn Edwards / The Right Brain/Left Brain: Coke Sams and Clarke Gallivan / The Professional Ass-Kicker: Eric Young / The Watcher: Debbie Field
