Chris lived in a rehearsal space inside Rocker Rehearsal Studios for a bit in San Francisco. One of the other tenants at the time was Anton Newcombe who was just starting The Brian Jonestown Massacre. Anton lived in the space right next to him. Chris recorded the very first version of the band’s track ‘Straight Up & Down’ which later became the title sequence music for HBO’s Boardwalk Empire. In 1991, Chris met mixer Mark Needham after Mark expressed interest after hearing some of Chris’ songwriting demos. Mark helped get Chris a small studio space inside Hyde Street Studios in San Francisco. Needham had just engineered Chris Issak’s Wicked Game and had studio space in Hyde Street as well. He was an early mentor to Chris as an engineer and mixer and Chris worked out of Hyde Street through 1997.

In 2000, Chris began working with a music production team tomandandy in Los Angeles. They scored Mark Pellington‘s The Mothman Prophecies and Roger Avary‘s The Rules Of Attraction. Chris engineered the music for The Mothman Prophecies, his guitar work is featured throughout the film, he co-produced the Soundtrack, and co-wrote the opening theme and end credits track.

In early 2003, Chris returned to album production, engineering and mixing for producer Tony Berg. In the 90’s, Berg became an A&R exec with Geffen Records where he played a role in signing artists such as Beck, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, At the Drive-In, etc… Berg also played guitar on a wide variety of releases including Peter Gabriel‘s Up. During this period, Chris worked with Mellowdrone and Jon Bates (Big Black Delta), Mt. Egypt, Dawes, Blake Mills, Carla Azar of Autolux and Camilla Grey. Chris also had a band with Michael Fitzpatrick (Fitz & The Tantrums).  By 2006, Chris had turned his attention to pop music working with the production/songwriting team Rock Mafia as an engineer. Chris was a vocal producer on some of the early Miley Cyrus tracks. Other artists he worked with over the next year include Vanessa Hudgens, Sick Puppies, Aly & AJ, and The Pussycat Dolls. Chris also worked with Songwriter Sheppard Solomon on several tracks. In 2007, Chris was producer on the Bratz movie soundtrack. Around this time, he also produced, engineered, and mixed tracks for Diane Birch and mixed Alexa Palladino‘s Exitmusic.

By about 2009, Chris found himself increasingly unsatisfied and burnt out working in the music business. Along with the declining perceived and monetary value of music, tightening of recording budgets and a dislike for the overall direction of where pop music was heading, Chris decided to take a break from music altogether for a while. Interested in learning some new skills, he began teaching himself about web design, photography, graphic design, and social media marketing. He also took a part time job as a web producer for American Media. He didn’t stay away from music for very long though and when he came back to it over the the next two years, he focused more on creating his own music instead of working on the technical side for others. He composed a collection of rock tracks playing all of the instruments, producing, engineering, and mixing it himself. Although not commercially released and much of the work was done under an alias, the tracks have and continue to be licensed for film and television extensively in the U.S. and internationally. In the years that followed, Chris worked with Universal Music Publishing Production Music, West One Music, Sonoton, & Immediate Music. He also amassed hundreds of unfinished compositions in various stages of development. His love for experimenting, learning, a need to do everything himself, and intense perfectionism often led him to never finish a lot of his material. Some tracks he would attempt mix for months only to be dissatisfied with the end result and delete the whole thing.

Around this same time, Chris’ mom Julie Arvan, who had previously been a Vice-President of Gymboree, had been working on a design for a new type of baby carrier. Inspired by yoga wear (lululemon, Athleta), she invented the Nesting Days skin-to-skin newborn carrier. Chris used his web and graphic design skills to make the website and they began selling the product online. Over the next two years, Nesting Days grew rapidly and Chris handled the social media, branding, and advertising. Nesting Days received their first patent in 2014.

Chris didn’t stop working on music though and moved over to working on electronic dance music. Between 2014 and 2015 he worked in varying capacities from co-wrting to mixing and mastering with artists Tenova, Whitney fierce, Eric Sharp, Gavin Turek, Spencer Ludwig And Shandra Dixon. In 2016, he scored two short films Moonfaze and Escultura Monumental collaborating with photographer and visual artist Nitin Vadukul.

As Nesting Days began to grow even more, Chris increasingly became involved in the business. He joined the Entrepreneurs’ Organization Accelerator program in January of 2017. The EO Accelerator program is a learning program for entrepreneurs who want to grow their business to pass the $1M mark through direct learning from mentors and affords members the unique experience of learning from and connecting with the world’s most influential entrepreneurs.

Chris still writes, records, performs, and produces his own music. In 2017, he finally started releasing some of his own work. He also dabbles with acting, photography, and painting in his spare time.