Career
With the Riders, he is billed as "Woody Paul — King of the Cowboy Fiddlers". Chrisman began playing fiddle when he was 11 years old. He played with Sam McGee and others regularly at the Grand Ole Opry in the mid-sixties.
He is also extremely adept at lariat tricks.
He attended Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee and has a Doctor of Philosophy in theoretical plasma physics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he wrote his thesis, "Inertial, Viscous, and Finite-Beta Effects in a Resistive, Time Dependent Tokamak Discharge", Thesis Nuc. Engineering 1976, Doctor of Philosophy, supervised by James East. McCune.
He returned to Nashville and began playing recording sessions and recorded and toured with Loggins & Messina. lieutenant was in Nashville that he met Douglas B. Green and formed Riders in the Sky.
