In the beginning…
On weekend visits to my grandmother Rose when I was four, she woke my twin sister and me late at night to sing, if she had forgotten and slipped us into bed without it. She’d play piano, and we’d sing church hymns she taught us. We soaked up our folks' 20's, 30s, and 40s records and sang all the Rodgers and Hammerstein and other musical comedy material our Mom exposed us to, overtures as well as songs. Rotating turns under and behind a pool table spotlight, we mimed favorite singers in secret basement performances, learning their styles and sounds. Starting with the Andrews and McGuire Sisters (why!?!?...) Marni Nixon and Shirley Jones (my sis sang a great Marion-the-Librarian lead in our high school's _The Music Man_ :->) we moved on to The Chad Mitchell Trio and Peter, Paul, and Mary; to, of course, the Beatles (Brit duos Peter & Gordon and Chad & Jeremy lending us viability); and to the Supremes and other great Motown artists. I also loved Nancy Wilson and Judy Garland.
Our parents, estranged from each other, nurtured our music world perhaps all the more. Listening to and singing with all our records, classic to rock, we eventually found friends to accompany us singing on our own, and in singing well, we both discovered a great sense of personal identity.
After duo turns together in the local Kansas City, MO folk music scene and in a college USO tour, as well as solo performances for both of us (a first for me at Kansas University) my sis focused her passion increasingly on her profession, in the field of family therapy. Meanwhile, in my last summer at KU, I joined my first rock band, touring the US in a bus with two other lead vocalists and a Chicago style horn section.
After moving to LA with my sis (I was afraid to move alone to Seattle... where my sis now lives :-> ; she soon left to join her boyfriend at film school in New York) I found musical life performing in acoustic duos at local eateries, like Westwood's Alice's Restaurant and Beverly Glen’s Café Four Oaks, and solo spots with UCLA’s big band jazz ensemble. These eventually gave way to some studio work -- commercial demos, jingles and voice-overs (including a bluesy-singer solo spot for Disney/Kraft's EPCOT pavillion at Florida's Disney World); “casuals” work (with special-occasion cover bands playing for private parties and events); and, eventually, singing for some original bands and songwriters. Vocal heroes now were Bonnie Raitt, Rikki Lee Jones, Gregory Hines (the friend who pierced my ears with a needle :-0), Don Henley, Stevie Nicks and Joni Mitchell. Jazz and blues-country rock inspired me most.
In the early
eighties, I joined Ken Liebenson and Lindy Rassmussen’s country-swing band,
the Doo-Wah Riders, and within a year we opened at the 5,000-seat Circle Star
Theater near San Francisco
It was then I began writing a blend of pop and country rock material and demoing songs with rock and jazz influenced players encountered through the years, finding a direction of my own. I began playing more piano, returned to guitar too, and found the themes that would compel me to write songs of my own.
Au Current
I’m a musician who plays sometimes for pay and sometimes simply for the love of it. I sing cover material I love, and I sing songs I have written about the things I’ve searched for, lost and found, which I offer up for any who can hear and relate to them. :->
Last revised June 25, 2004