Chrystabell’s new performance piece The Spirit Lamp channels the flicker of candlelight into a living memorial for her late collaborator David Lynch.
At a Glance
- The San Antonio native debuts the musical devotional on January 20 at Radio/East.
- The show weaves Lynch collaborations with 16mm film projections by David Gatten.
- Chrystabell calls the project “the music that would help get me through losing him.”
Why it matters: Fans witness an intimate artist-to-audience ritual that extends Lynch’s lifelong quest for global peace.
The 47-year-old vocalist met Lynch at 19, when the director had just completed a million-dollar Transcendental Meditation course with Maharishi. Their first song, “This Train,” arrived moments after the retreat; Lynch played it for Elizabeth Taylor within days, believing the track could “reach her heart.” That moment launched a partnership spanning three albums and a role for Chrystabell as FBI agent Tammy Preston in Twin Peaks: The Return.
Onstage, Chrystabell revisits those dreamlike compositions while Gatten’s experimental footage rolls behind her. She slips into Julee Cruise’s “The World Spins,” letting the Twin Peaks classic echo through a new emotional lens. Between numbers she speaks directly to the audience, framing each piece as a ceremony drawn from grief and gratitude.
“I didn’t know when we were writing it that it would also be the music that would help get me through losing him, but that’s been the gift,” she says, voice cracking slightly over the phone from her La Vernia duplex.
Lynch died last January at 78. Chrystabell describes their shared mission as literal, not rhetorical: “He literally wanted peace on Earth-it’s not just this cliché thing that you say-with every cell of his body.”
Tickets are on sale now for the one-night performance. Doors open at 7 p.m.
News Of Austin‘s January 16, 2026 issue contains the original interview.
