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Who else but hosts Wendy Stuart and Tym Moss could “spill the tea” on their weekly show “If These Walls Could Talk” live from Pangea Restaurant on the Lower Eastside of NYC, with their unique style of honest, and emotional interviews, sharing the fascinating backstory of celebrities, entertainers, recording artists, writers and artists and bringing their audience along for a fantastic ride.
Chris Rael will be featured guests on “If These Walls Could Talk” with hosts Wendy Stuart and Tym Moss on Wednesday, May 28th, 2025 at 2 PM ET live from the infamous Pangea Restaurant.
Wendy Stuart is an author, celebrity interviewer, model, filmmaker and along with If These Walls Could Talk she hosts TriVersity Talk, a weekly web series with featured guests discussing their lives, activism and pressing issues in the LGBTQ Community.
Tym Moss is a popular NYC singer, actor, and radio/tv host who recently starred in the hit indie film “JUNK” to critical acclaim.
CHRIS RAEL & CHURCH OF BETTY: 35 years exploring the sonic frontier
Founder of the pioneering Indo-pop group Church of Betty and indie music label Fang Records, Chris Rael is one of New York City’s most prolific veteran composers.
As a young man in Maryland, he embraced conceptual songwriting while still learning to play. Arriving in the East Village in 1986, he sought out kindred spirits and formed the independent musicians’ co-op Fang Records, releasing the underground classic Acorn by the Mommyheads, 101 Crustaceans’ Songs of Resignation, and dozens of other titles by an array of distinctive, original bands.
In 1988 he traveled to India for the first time, discovering a love of South Asian music that colored Church of Betty’s sound palette thereafter. He returned to Varanasi annually during the ’90s, studying Hindustani classical singing with the late Balchandra Patekar and sitar with Rabindra Goswami. His organic integration of these influences with progressive rock n roll broke new ground in world fusion composition and shaped a soaring acrobatic vocal style.
Church of Betty’s early incarnation included pianist/guitarist Ed Pastorini of 101 Crustaceans, the late Jan Kotik of the Mommyheads on drums, bassist Cindy Rickmond, and bassoonist Claire de Brunner. Later Kotik moved to guitar, and Jon Feinberg (drums) and Joe Quigley (bass) came on board as the rhythm section.
Church of Betty was part of the first wave of progressive acts through the original Knitting Factory on Houston Street. The band blanketed the downtown club scene, playing regularly at rock clubs such as CBGB, appearing on public radio, and performing at public arts venues in the U.S. and Canada. Fang released the group’s first two albums, West of the East and Kashi. Ponk Records released the third, In Search of Spiritual Junkfood.
In 1993 the group toured Europe and performed at the Contemporary Indian Music Festival in Vienna, where Rael met British-Indian world music star Najma. The two collaborated on Forbidden Kiss, a daring update of songs by classic Bollywood composers S.D. and R.D. Burman, eventually released to great fanfare on Shanachie Records in 1996. Performing with Najma, Rael met long-time tabla partner Deep Singh.
Upon Singh’s arrival, Church of Betty reeled off a series of albums from 1998 to 2003: Comedy of Animals, Fruit on the Vine, Tripping With Wanda, and Revenge of the Hippies. The group became regular favorites at Greenwich Village’s legendary Bottom Line, also performing at Town Hall, Symphony Space, Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Prospect Park, the National Mall in Washington, DC, the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, and many others, including National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, A Prairie Home Companion, and World Cafe. Betty’s live lineup included guitarist/percussionist Marlon Cherry and violinists Gregor Kitzis and Rima Fand.
Rael’s creative community extended beyond Church of Betty. He produced dozens of multi-band bills for Fang, later curating music for the original Howl! Festivals. He was a member of the inventive rock band The Hand with Kenny Siegal and Brian Geltner, now of the group Johnny Society. The Hand opened a studio called The Kennel in then-deserted Dumbo, Brooklyn. Joined by producers Bryce Goggin and Danny Kadar, The Kennel generated cutting-edge quality recordings for nearly a decade.
In 1997, Rael met and soon married performance artist Penny Arcade. The pair joined artistic forces and became the center of a thriving creative community in the Lower East Side, producing theatre, video, recordings, concerts and live performances of every ilk. Highlights included Arcade’s theatre pieces Bad Reputation and New York Values at PS122, and the couple’s Rebellion Cabaret, performed at Sydney Opera House in 2005.
Church of Betty scattered geographically in 2003. Following solo efforts The Devil You Know and Cranberry Street, Rael relocated to Los Angeles for a few years in the late 2000s. During this time he began creating original narrative video, scoring film, and developing his first theatrical piece Araby, based on the short stories of James Joyce’s Dubliners. The text-and-song cycle opened to rave reviews at Dixon Place in 2009, luring Rael back to his creative community in New York.
Rael won the Outstanding Soundtrack Award at the Outfest Film Festival in Los Angeles in 2005 for Queer Realities and Cultural Amnesia, a documentary produced by the Lower East Side Biography Project. In 2011 he won the New York International Fringe Festival’s Excellence in Music Composition Award for Araby, which also appeared in the festival’s prestigious Encore Series. In 2016 he received the Acker Award, a lifetime achievement award for outstanding contributions to the avant garde arts community in defiance of convention. Television credits include Independent Lens, In Treatment, Outsourced, and Flesh and Bone. He has received grants from the Jerome Foundation, the Puffin Foundation, and the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust.
Over the years he has worked with such luminaries as progressive composer Elliott Sharp; singers Annabella Lwin of Bow Wow Wow, Curt Smith of Tears for Fears, and Shara Nova of My Brightest Diamond; bands Oasis, Johnny Society, Pugwash, White Magic, Rebecca Moore & Prevention of Blindness, Ida, Mecca Bodega, and Life in a Blender; Indian classical masters Amar Nath Mishra, Samir Chatterjee, Steve Gorn, Krishna Batt, and Ramesh Mishra; theatre stars John Kelly, Stew of Passing Strange, and Frank London of the Klezmatics; Beat poets Marty Matz, Ira Cohen, and Charles Henri Ford; punk rock legend Jayne County, pop visionary David Byrne, and of course Penny Arcade.
Watch Chris Rael on “If These Walls Could Talk” with hosts Wendy Stuart and Tym Moss on YouTube here:
