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.
Listen on Spotify here:
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.
https://damncoyotechris.bandcamp.com/album/departures