Early this year, Chris Cron — a Nashville-based vocalist who performs in the Beach Boys tribute group Pet Sounds Live — received a phone call from Beach Boys musical director Brian Eichenberger that left him almost too stunned for words. “He said, ‘Bruce is retiring,’” says Cron, referring to Beach Boy Bruce Johnston, who joined the group in 1965, and has played more than 6,000 shows with them over the past 61 years. “‘And we need someone to fill his spot. Are you interested?’ The offer didn’t even make sense to me.”
For Eichenberger and the rest of the current Beach Boys touring band, led by founding member Mike Love, the offer made a lot of sense. Cron’s Instagram feed is packed with viral videos where he re-creates vintage Beach Boys harmonies with stunning precision, mimicking the unique vocal styles of every single member. Pet Sounds Live brings that same commitment to historical perfection to concert stages across the country, and Cron proved himself to be an asset to the current Beach Boys lineup late last year when he briefly subbed for Christian Love on vocals and guitar.
View this post on Instagram
But he never expected to be anything more than a brief fill-in, let alone the full-time replacement for a classic-era member who sang on “California Girls” and Pet Sounds. “People say, ‘You’re in the Beach Boys!’ says Cron. “And I’m like, ‘Well, I’m a touring member of the current thing right now, so I guess so.’ But it’s just weird to be like … I don’t know what to think. It’s just fun. This was never on my bingo card.”
Love Music?
Get your daily dose of everything happening in Australian/New Zealand music and globally.
The road to this moment started four decades back in Orange County, California, where Cron grew up in a household that revered the Beatles, Elton John, and Steely Dan. “When Windows 95 came out, it came with a grainy music video for Weezer’s ‘Buddy Holly,’” he says. “And The Blue Album came out when I was 12. It’s the first album I remember loving that was completely my own. Then I had a youth pastor who turned me on to British second-wave ska. I got really into that stuff.”
In 2000, Cron founded the indie-rock project Mêlée, eventually signing a deal with Warner Bros. They toured a lot, including two summers on the Vans Warped Tour, and cut three records, initially in the mold of Something Corporate, and then eventually “Elton John meets Keane,” in the words of Cron. But he never found a real footing in the industry, which was slowly dying while they were together. The band’s final record wasn’t even released in America. “We took it back and tried to shop it around to other labels, and no one was biting,” he says. “And I was just tired and burnt out. I told the guys that I was done.”
Cron was a few months short of his 30th birthday, still living with his parents, and deeply uncertain about what his future held without the band. He found work at Cold Stone Creamery, and a grocery store, got married, and eventually decided to move to Nashville and start over. His wife worked an office job while he oversaw an after-school program at the Nashville YMCA, and took odd construction jobs.
At one point, he found himself face-to-face with Paramore’s Hayley Williams while doing work on her kitchen. Years earlier, Mêlée went on a tour where Paramore served as their support act. “I’m now in her kitchen working on plumbing and stuff,” he says. “And I said to her, ‘I don’t know if you remember this, but your band opened up for us.’ She did remember, and she was super sweet and nice. We talked about the good old days of the Warped Tour.”
Cron and his wife had a baby boy, and continuing with a full-time music career felt less important to him than earning a steady income for his family. But he still gave piano lessons on the side, and eventually found gig work with the Israeli software company Simply. Their apps Simply Sing and Simply Guitar help teach young musicians using AI feedback. “Instead of getting the licenses for all these classic songs, which would cost a fortune, they just opted to rerecord everything,” says Cron. “So they hired me to sing a bunch of classic-rock tunes. And one of them was ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice.’”
Cron grew up aware of the big Beach Boys hits, but didn’t spend much time with their catalog until 2003, when he came across the Pet Sounds Sessions box set while Mêlée were cutting a record at Tiny Telephone Studios in San Francisco. “It was when we all had iPods, so I ripped it to my computer and then put it on my iPod,” he says. “It had all of the instrumentals and the a cappella vocal tracks on it. Our producer was like, ‘You have to just go immerse yourself in that.’”
He was stunned by what he heard. “They went way beyond the scope of just two guitars, bass, and drums, and maybe a piano,” Cron says. “To have clarinet and flute and glockenspiel and all these things in a pop-rock production … It was just magic.”
Two decades later, after singing “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” for the Simply Sing app, an idea came to him. “I had no followers and I wasn’t trying to become an influencer or whatever,” Cron says. “I just was throwing stuff at the wall to see what stuck. I was like, ‘Oh, I’ve got all these tracks for ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice.’ Maybe I throw up a stupid video about how to sound like the Beach Boys.’”
View this post on Instagram
He posted it April 13, 2023. “I checked a couple hours later and it was like 10,000 views, which was the most I’d ever had,’ Cron says. “When I came back it was like 40,000 views. And so I called my wife, and was jokingly like, ‘I got a viral video.’”
The video eventually racked up nearly 2 million views, and he followed it up with many Beach Boys-related videos. One fan tagged John Stamos in the comments, and he followed Cron. “I wrote him a message like, ‘Hey, thanks for the follow,’” says Cron. “And he wrote me back and we just kind of kept talking back and forth. And then he introduced me to Brian Eichenberger, who lives like 20 minutes away. We got coffee and hit it off.”
The video also grabbed the attention of Jeff Celentano, an occasional member of Al Jardine’s backing group, who also leads the Beach Boys tribute band Good Vibrations. He invited Cron to join him and his collaborator Jason Brewer in their new touring project Pet Sounds Live. Their goal was to play a note-perfect rendition of Pet Sounds along with classic Beach Boys hits on the tribute-band circuit.
“I met them through Instagram,” says Cron. “They were like, ‘We need a bass player.’ I bought a bass and learned how to play. I played bass on demos before, but that was simple punk-rock things. Learning all the Carol Kaye parts took me a month or so, and the first few shows were a little rocky for me. I eventually got it down and just memorized everything.”
But the dates were sporadic, and Cron continued to take random vocal-session jobs, including Japanese commercials, and parts for Swedish house DJs. Now, Cron and his wife had two kids to support, and the irregular work meant that some months they’d be $3,000 short. Then the next month he’d make enough for two months.
He stayed in touch with Eichenberger, who had young kids the same age as his own, and the families grew close. In the spring of 2024, Eichenberger invited Cron and his family to a Beach Boys show in Kentucky. Cron was welcomed onto the stage to sing on “Kokomo,” and his kids were waved on to dance to “Barbara Ann,” much like the fictional Tanner clan did on Full House back in 1988.
Stamos, who performs at occasional Beach Boys shows, as he’s done since 1985, remained in touch with Cron as well. “He loves to connect and help people,” says Cron. “Early on when I was talking to him, he’s like, ‘Did you get an invite to my birthday party?’ I was like, ‘What are you talking about?’ And my wife and I went to his birthday party out in California. There was several more dudes there, like drummers, that he met online, too. He just loves giving back.”
Cron presumed that his interactions with the touring Beach Boys unit would remain limited to tiny guest spots like the one in Kentucky, until November 2025, when they asked him to sub for Christian Love on guitar and vocals for shows in Florida, including a run at Epcot Center. “I took the family and we went to Disney World,” says Cron. “It was just a surreal experience. Bruce was there, and he was so welcoming. He gave my son advice like, ‘You should go to college.’”
Johnston joined the Beach Boys 61 years ago when Brian Wilson’s original road replacement, Glen Campbell, stepped aside after just a few months. With the exception of the period between 1972 and 1978, he remained in the group until the end of 2025. When he decided to retire, the baton was passed to Cron.
“You can’t replace Bruce Johnston,” says Cron. “I can’t even say I’m filling his shoes because that doesn’t feel right. I’m just occupying a space till he comes back.”
Cron had just three weeks to mentally prepare before flying to Albuquerque, New Mexico, in mid-February for two days of intense rehearsals, where they ran through the full show over and over. Tim Bonhomme handles the heavy lifting on the keyboard parts, and he helped Cron figure out where to chime in.
“I’m basically doing auxiliary parts on piano and organ,” says Cron. “On ‘Darlin,’ I play the low piano bass thing that doubles the bass guitar, and then tambourine. And then I sing all of Bruce’s parts. So I had to learn Christian’s parts last year, and then totally relearn the whole show on Bruce’s parts. And I’m still in Pet Sounds Live, so I have three different parts in my head.”
The majority of the lead vocals are handled by Mike Love and Eichenberger, with Christian Love and drummer Jon Bolton all getting their own spotlight moments. But Cron sings the bridge on “Surfer Girl” and takes lead on “Do You Wanna Dance” in addition to the “I wish they all could be California” hook in “California Girls.” And he’s a part of the vocal blend throughout the entire night.
This new gig means Cron will be on the road much of the year, especially since he’s still active in Pet Sounds Live, but he’s ready for the challenge. “My wife got big-eyed when I told her about the Beach Boys offer,” he says. “She said, ‘You have to do this. You can’t say no to this opportunity.’ I haven’t toured since I was in my old band back in 2010. I was newly married then, and didn’t have kids. And now I’m fully married [laughs], and have kids. It’s a big jump, but they’re really excited.”
Amazingly, none of this would have happened without Instagram. “It’s just weird,” he says. “For all of the woes of social media, which there are many, this is one of the silver linings of it. Also, none of this could have been planned. It’s just a happy accident, as Bob Ross would say.”
From Rolling Stone US
