UPDATED: Sept. 18  at 11:20 p.m.

He was writing songs as early as he can remember. At age 5, he was playing the drums. And by the time he was 18, Ted Horowitz was performing at CBGB’s alongside Patti Smith, the Ramones and The Police.

Now going by the stage name Popa Chubby, Horowitz will perform at Funk ‘n Waffles on Sunday at 7:30 p.m. Doors open at 7 p.m., and admission is $20 per person.

Horowitz’s passion for music was born at a candy shop his parents owned in Queens. He was able to keep the 45s switched out of the shop’s jukebox each week, and by the time he was 7, Horowitz had a record collection spanning Frank Sinatra and Jimi Hendrix.

The young musician started playing guitar in his teenage years and found himself in the middle of the ‘90s punk rock scene in New York City. At 18, Horowitz met a performance artist named “Screaming Mad George,” who gave him his first break – a gig at CBGB’s, a New York venue widely considered to be the birthplace of punk.

“If you played at CBGB’s at the time, they would let you in for every show,” Horowitz said. “To see Patti Smith for the first time and be an 18-year-old kid from Queens who was listening to Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, it shook up your chromosomes, man.”

All the while, though, Horowitz’s true interests were in the blues. After a couple “dark years” involving drugs, addiction and eviction, he began playing the blues in local bars and slipping in original songs between sets.

“Slowly I just came back and kind of resurrected myself and in my mid-to-late 20s I had a career again, and by the time I was 30 I realized all I wanted to do was play guitar. I didn’t care where it was,” he said.

Horowitz said his music is influenced by so many genres that it’s difficult to describe his style — which is the way he likes it.

Courtesy of Popa Chubby

“Some people call it New York City blues, or rockin’ blues. I just call it hard-driving music,” said Rob Schneider, a central New York blues promoter. “He plays it all, and he makes it his own.”

Horowitz said he writes half of his songs while sleeping. He wakes up with a lyric or tune in his head, and the other half are the products of being a dedicated songwriter. Horowitz, who said he comes from “a real working-class mentality,” said he’s a fan of hard-working modern artists like Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Julian Schnabel.

“The whole thing was a work ethic. It was a factory,” he said. “These guys were churning out work, man, ‘cause that’s what you do. It’s a writer’s job to write. There’s no such thing as lack of inspiration, or writer’s block. It’s a bunch of bullsh*t,” he said.

Horowitz said many people want the rewards of the music business without putting in the work. He calls these people rock stars, and said he doesn’t care much for them. Rather, Horowitz said people should never sit around and wait for people to make things happen for them.

“You gotta take the bull by the horns and you gotta make sh*t happen,” he said.

Schneider predicts the crowd at Funk ‘n Waffles on Sunday will be a mixed bag of generations. He’s seen Popa Chubby perform several times, and recalls that the musician’s guitar skills never fail to leave people in awe.

Horowitz is most excited to eat some of Syracuse’s best waffles after showing the crowd a good time.

“I play all over the world, and I find that there’s one constant in any audience. People come to a concert to be entertained,” he said. “It’s your job as an artist to make them forget all the sh*t in their lives. If you’re doing your job, at the end of the show, people will look happy when they’re leaving.”

Published on September 18, 2017 at 10:56 pm

Contact Claire: cmille07@syr.edu