Damn Coyote Chris Embraces Humour, Mortality, and Melody With “Destination Funeral”
With his album Departures, his 2025 collection of “comfort-food songs from my Private Reserve,” Damn Coyote Chris turns again to themes of mortality, resilience, and the curious way laughter keeps us afloat. “Destination Funeral,” stands as one of the most personal and playful testaments yet to his lifelong songwriting craft.
Chris Nikiforuk-Rhyason — known to Alberta audiences for more than 35 years as Damn Coyote Chris — has long worked at the crossroads of music, tattoo artistry, and visual creation. As the force behind Them Damn Coyotes through the ‘90s and 2000s, he built a reputation for raw energy and unfiltered storytelling. With his solo work, Chris channels those same instincts inward, merging blues, jazz, and classical guitar techniques into songs that balance humour with unshakable honesty.
“’Destination Funeral’ was a song that had itself written in my mind for years,” Chris reflects. “Struggles with mental health, a self-destructive nature, and a dark slapstick sense of humour always bring it to mind and consistently get a laugh.”
What began as a joke to his grandmother — a riff on a canceled wedding and the imagined gathering of friends at his funeral — grew into a narrative about acceptance, community, and humour’s strange partnership with grief.
The song’s lyrics capture that tension directly:
“Folks I’m sending you this message / Hopin’ that it finds you well / Cuz I had a great idea / I know it’s not an easy sell…”
It’s an invitation not to mourn, but to travel together toward the inevitable horizon.
Recorded in Edmonton with longtime collaborator and producer Stew Kirkwood, “Destination Funeral” carries a tropical lilt. Steel drums and commanding guitar work give the track a celebratory air, somewhere between Vince Gill’s precision and Jimmy Buffett’s wry spirit. When Chris laid down his lead solo, Kirkwood spun around in disbelief: “That was YOU!! See, I knew you needed to get some music out.”
Humour anchors the composition, but so does vivid imagery. Chris laughs as he describes picturing a catamaran equipped with a woodchipper: “Let’s go swimmin’ with them sharks man… Chum the waters with me.” This macabre humour sits comfortably next to the tenderness of sharing the final journey with friends.
As with the rest of Departures, Chris leans on what he calls “100% human generated” songs — music without pretense or polish for its own sake, but sharpened through decades of lived experience. The result is a record that uses humour, philosophy, and craft to bridge the distance between sorrow and celebration.
“Destination Funeral” is not a farewell, but a continuation — one more adventure where melody becomes memory, and humour softens what might otherwise be unbearable. In Chris’s hands, the weight of mortality becomes lighter, even joyful.
With his guitar, his voice, and his unique ability to frame the hardest truths in laughter, Damn Coyote Chris reminds listeners that the best songs are not simply written — they are lived, shared, and carried together.
Hi, Chris! Good to see you again! How was your summer?
The summer has been good. Well-balanced. The Tattoo Industry is suffering right now which makes stuff hard, but the music has been very rewarding so that makes life less depressing. I am super grateful for the feedback I have been getting about my album which is to say I find it easier to remain cheerful as the moths eat my wallet.
You juggle dark comedy and raw honesty — do you ever worry people might laugh at the wrong part… or worse, not laugh at the right one?
That is a solid question! In Destination Funeral, I definitely hoped that people see the humour in it… but if they find it a bit too dark- that is ok too. I’ll use my momma as an example.
Mom is a very sincere and sweet lady (retired from a career in education) who will never engage darkness by choice. She doesn’t like dark art, she doesn’t like sad songs, she won’t engage with anything that doesn’t make her feel happy.
You’d think that she would turn away from a song like Destination Funeral due to its content… and although she didnt laugh, it has proven to be her favorite song (of mine) to date.
I think the cheerful nature of the music contrasts the dark humour in the lyrics and theme… so I feel like if she gets it, it was successful.
The song began as a joke to your grandmother. Did she laugh, roll her eyes, or start planning catering options for the funeral?
Hahaha!
My grandma loved dark humour. She introduced me to The Rodeo Song by Showdown, would let me stay up late to watch horrific comedy shows like Bizarre, and played George Carlin records while she cleaned the house.
When I approached her, I was fresh out of a hard breakup, hadnt eaten or slept in a couple of weeks, my eyes were all swollen and bloodshot from tears. I told her to set one less place at the table, and that if everyone is gonna share a vacation on my account it’ll have to be a destination funeral.
The humour in that didn’t strike me when I said it, I was just being miserable. But her eyes bulged out, she bit her tongue and threw her head back cackling hysterically.
She used a few expletives to season her reaction and hugged me as I processed what had just happened.
You call your songs “100% human generated.” Is that just your way of saying no robots were harmed in the making of this record?
That is funny!
No I haven’t harmed any robots (if you don’t count accidental damage caused by my total lack of tech savvy).
I try not to be too formulaic in what I make. I like the organic quality that comes from accounting for human imperfection. Sometimes you cant make a rhyme without expressing a word a certain way, sometimes the hangnail on your finger affects the way you express a note. That is the stuff I find most interesting.
We have this idea that we get to dictate the way we our creations are seen or heard by how we make them… but how we make them is actually dictated by the moment. The first time I see a seasoned musician who appears to play things flawlessly, it looks like magic, but when I see them a few times I start to see the differences between performances and the human starts to appear, and the work they did to make it sound flawless gets implied and I find it way more interesting.
Between tattooing and songwriting, which is scarier — holding a needle to someone’s arm, or putting your darkest jokes to music?
They can both be terrifying. The defining factor is the receiver: the tattoo client or audience.
Trying to anticipate their reception can make a person’s hair fall out. It is our job to find balance between our artistic fulfillment and managing the odds (to our favour) that they get a positive experience.
I try to plan things extensively, and I make a ‘grocery list’ of pros and cons. I use them to cancel each other out as much as they can, then I focus on the cons exclusively.
Wherever possible I’ll do what needs doing to cross off the cons, once everything else is accounted for, if my own discomfort is the only factor left… then that isn’t a good enough excuse to not follow through.
I dive in and try to direct the factors that I have control over, and trust the process.
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