Daily Egyptian Spring 05
City Council candidate influenced by music
Ashley Richardson
Daily Egyptian
Chris Wissmann has two vices in life - ice cream and music, the latter of which spurred the 35-year-old city councilman's return to his birthplace. Wissmann was born at Alton Hospital in Carbondale in 1969, during which time his father was an SIUC student. He grew up in Chicago, where Wissmann remembers seeing a Beatles cartoon on television. It is a memory he has not forgotten and an experience he said blossomed his lifelong love for music.
"I thought, 'This is amazing. I've got to have this,'" Wissmann said. "And it expanded into the Rolling Stones and then went backwards to Little Richard and Chuck Berry and forward into Led Zeppelin's 'Red.'" Wissmann is one of six candidates vying for three open City Council seats. The general election takes place April 5. In the third grade, Wissmann began building his music collection, which now includes more than 1,400 CDs, several hundred cassette tapes and nearly 1,000 albums. Ranging in categories from blues to classic rock and reggae to punk music, Wissmann said he enjoys all types of music and, before his marriage to wife Jesslynn Jobe nearly six years ago, it was the most important thing in his life. This love for music and desire to major in the communications field eventually brought Wissmann back to Carbondale to attend school at SIUC where he majored in radio-television.
"When it came time to go to college, SIU was really the best bet for me," Wissmann said. "I was not really searching for my roots or anything like that, but it did feel like home right away." During his college years, Wissmann worked at WIDB Radio, at which time he realized the particular type of radio he had wanted to do was not what he had expected it to be. He wanted to be creative and play "good music" but thought his creativity would be suppressed. As a result, Wissmann said he and a couple of his friends decided to launch the Nightlife, an alternative newsweekly with a focus on arts and entertainment and emphasis on music. Nearly 15 years later, the Nightlife is thriving, and Wissmann, the editor, said it was easy from the get-go.
"It was a strange thing, but there was a need for it in the community," Wissmann said. "It was profitable from day one. There was no financing required." Wissmann, who is nearing the completion of his two-year term as a Carbondale city councilman, said he views his tenure on the council and desire to continue as a councilmember as an extension of growing up. "At some point, you get sick of the dorms and decide you want to move off campus and control your own menu until you graduate and get a job," Wissmann said. "And eventually you decide you want to, hopefully, expand outside of that narrow self-interest and do something for the community."
As a councilmember, Wissmann said he is most proud of having the opportunity to work with other council members to forge a common ground for the diverse group of people living in Carbondale. "Constructive solutions to community problems is something I'm really happy to have played a part in," Wissmann said. If re-elected for a second term, Wissmann said one of his primary goals would be to make Carbondale an easier place for people to live. Wissmann said so many people, like his parents, want to stay in Carbondale but are forced to leave because of a lack of good paying jobs. "So many other people have gone through what my parents did," Wissmann said.
"More often than not, if you're not a doctor or a lawyer, you're a delivery man, you're a waitress, you're a bartender; and those are good, honorable professions, but it's really hard to live out the American dream off of what those professions pay." Wissmann said although boosting the economy and bringing more jobs to the city is not an easy task, he thinks it is possible and that the city has begun moving in the right direction with the establishment of the TIF district. However, Wissmann said he thinks the city's ability to develop economically has a direct relationship to students being able to stay in Carbondale upon graduation and find good jobs. "There are still a lot of things left undone," Wissmann said. "We've taken some steps in the right direction, but we still are exporting too many of our well-educated youth."
Last update: Tuesday, March 22, 2005 at 2:21:24 PM
Copyright 2009 Daily Egyptian Spring 05