My first musical memories were sitting on the floor in front of a

record player and listening to my parents records by the Kingston

Trio, Henry Mancini, and Herb Alpert. The first record I owned was

by the Everly Brothers, that I remember listening to over and over.

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The first musical instrument I can remember playing was the

upright piano in my grandmother's living room. She played the

organ at church on Sundays. I remember her teaching me a bit.

I started playing violin when I was 7. I remember enjoying it...

A couple of years later, I moved to trombone - I changed schools, and my new school didn't have an orchestra, only a band. The trombone worked out - my grandfather's favorite musician was Louis Armstrong, so was there some inspiration there.

 

Along with most of America, my parents let me stay up and watch the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. I don't think I ever listened to the Everly Brothers again... I bought every Beatles album that came out and wore them all out. When the Monkees hit the scene in 1966 I took to them as well thanks to the miracle of TV. My favorite Monkey was Peter Tork - I also had blonde hair, and the bass guitar was "my sound".  Ironically, many years later, Peter Tork ended up moving to the town next to mine in Connecticut, and hung out at a small local music venue that I also frequented. The Stones were in the mix as well - covers of Stones tunes were the preferred dance tunes during junior high.

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My high school had no orchestra or band - and my music performing was limited to playing a Hammond organ that I purchased and stashed in my parents basement. When I arrived at college I discovered that a lot of the guys and girls in my dorm had some musical talents - mostly guitar and/or vocals. I picked up a guitar - partly for musical pursuits, partly to attract girls. Music was a great diversion from the grind of studying in engineering school. I played with my dormmates at a lot of open mic nights, coffeehouse events, etc.  It was the late 1970's - the popular music was California Rock - Crosby Stills Nash and Young, The Eagles, and Jackson Browne; as well as Southern Rock - Marshall Tucker, The Allman Brothers, and Lynyrd Skynrd. The Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan, Santana, Boston, and Aerosmith rounded out the popular music all around me.

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At UConn, we were blessed to have a small music venue called "Shaboo" a short distance from campus. Shaboo was a popular stop for blues musicians like Paul Butterfield, James Cotton, and James Montgomery. There was no seating in front of the stage - so you we up close and personal with the musicians. I had a job delivering bulk newspapers to paperboys and rural addresses my last semester in college. I had to pick up my papers in my 1969 GMC van at 2:00am each morning. Bad news - except that I picked the papers up directly across the street from Shaboo, and 2:00am coincided with the hour that Shaboo closed - so I watched a lot of great performances at Shaboo and then went across the street to grab my papers. Sleep was optional in. those days...​

 

While I was at UConn, I ended up doing some of the sound engineering at a local avant-garde music and art performance center in Hartford. I found I enjoyed that work - and even though the tools have changed hugely (for the better, my opinion), I still enjoy that part of the process of creating music.

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Near the end of my college days, I packed up my van, built enough sleeping space for two, and tried to convince my former roommate to forget grad school and come with me to LA to make it big. It's probably a great thing for both of us that he had a list of very good reasons why he couldn't do that, which led he and I to follow our chosen profession that we had spent four or more years preparing for....

 

As I explain in my song "Frontier Daze", I ended up meeting my wife to be not long after moving to Cheyenne, WY for my first job after college. We started a family pretty quickly - and my musical pursuits were mostly on the back burner again (with no regrets). That was the 1980's - the decade of disco - which shut down most of my musical interests until Stevie Ray Vaughan hit the scene. That grew into a love of electric blues in general, including Clapton, The Allman Brothers, Buddy Guy, Muddy Waters, Albert King, BB King, Susan Tedeschi, Freddie King, and lots of others.

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I regret never having an appreciation for Tom Petty while he was alive. I think I turned off all music coming out in the 80's due to my dislike of disco. Today, I view Petty as an incredible songwriter, able to say so much with just a few straightforward, easily understood lyrics…

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From my song "Frontier Daze" - "forty some years gone by" - raising an amazing family, and following a career in engineering - which brings me full circle to today - I have time and resources to pursue my musical interests…

 

I include the following artists in my list of musical influences:

• Guitar - Stills, Clapton, Gibbons, Guy, SRV, Walsh, Betts

• Slide Guitar - Allman, Winters, Trucks, Lindley, Gilmour, Harrison

• Songwriting - Browne, Petty, McCartney