Chris St. Hilaire is a Trinidadian-American multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and producer based in New York City (Lenapehoking). An in-demand touring and studio musician, Chris has toured the world with artists such as Sinkane and Doyle Bramhall II, and in 2022 became a member of The Black Keys’ touring band. In primetime television, Chris has been featured on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Later…with Jools Holland, and The Voice alongside The Black Keys.
Born in a suburb of New York City and raised between New York, Trinidad, and Antigua, Chris grew up in a multicultural world. Largely self taught, beginning with drums, his Caribbean roots showed in his rhythmic sensibilities. Chris got his musical start drumming along with cassette tapes of Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, and The Meters – inspired also by his musical father, who toured as Chubby Checker’s guitarist and introduced Chris to songwriting. Shortly after moving to NYC as a teenager, he began gigging professionally.
As a founding member of The London Souls, St. Hilaire’s standout musicianship and singing earned him critical acclaim on the band’s two studio albums and more than a decade of performances in North America, Europe, and Asia, sharing stages with The Who, Paul McCartney, Lenny Kravitz, and The Roots, among many others.
“St. Hilaire, for his part, is a bombastic, airtight drummer who’s somehow found the ability to croon out delicate vocal lines even as his hands are busy bringing his instrument to the brink of demolition.”
—Okayplayer
In the studio, Chris St. Hilaire is a sought after session musician, with notable performances on records by Dan Auerbach, Eric Krasno, CeeLo Green, Marcus King, and Johanna Warren.
As a solo artist, Chris released his full-length debut titled Enspirited on October 9, 2023 – an intensely scored manifesto, composed of Trinidadian-inspired percussion, steelpan, synthesizers, strings, and woodwinds. All songwriting, production, and engineering on the album was completed by St. Hilaire himself – an enormous step forward for him as a multifaceted artist. Caribbean Beat highlighted the album as “deceptively unique,” referring to the lyricism as possessing “a subtle cynicism and hyperbolic hopefulness” and affirming that the album serves to “both acknowledge his heritage and to celebrate a Trinidadian musical aesthetic from the 1950s and beyond that resonates solidly here.” All proceeds from Enspirited have gone towards the Manna-hatta Fund, which promotes Indigenous heritage and social services in NYC.
“And besides the crazy lambadas, the heady kompas, the inspired calypsos, the wild zouks, and other cheerful rhythms, besides the flutes, the marimbas, the percussions, the guitars, the organs and the synths you will also discover on this Enspirited, the other more political facet of the album, with a Chris St. Hilaire who does not hide his commitments to cultures…”
—Djolo – Cultures d’Afriques
St. Hilaire has also released three EPs to his name: Knowledge of Self (2019), B.C. (2021), and Traveling Man (2022); all of which were also written, recorded, and produced by St. Hilaire. In 2021, Bandcamp selected B.C. (“Black Christ”) as part of its “New and Notable” selections, while Djolo called the album “explosive and dark”. Chris’ music has also been featured on screen – “Up All Night” was featured in the Sundance Film Festival-selected How It Ends (directed by Daryl Wein and Zoe Lister-Jones) and the sober living comedy Sweet Dreams (starring Johnny Knoxville), while “Unify” was featured in Showtime’s hit political documentary series The Circus.
Most recently, Chris teamed up with Trinidadian songwriter, dub poet, and educator Raga to create Tell Dem (2024), a full-length album of reggae, dub poetry, and dub compositions co-written, engineered, and produced by St. Hilaire.