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Hello. Welcome to my page. Make yourself at home. My life story goes like this: When I was in my mom's belly she went with my dad to Michigan for a job interview. She saw the waves coming in from Lake Superior and somehow knew we would live here. I didn't speak for a few years and I slept right through my mom vacuuming under the crib. So they thought I was deaf. My first word was "I would like some juice now." My mom dropped something at that moment. It may have been the phone, or a jar of pickles. She makes fantastic pickles.

Music came to me through the records and tapes of my parents and oldest sister and brother. The Police, Brahms, Ray Charles, and the Lone Ranger to name a few. I experienced live music when my father would sing to us. He would lean in the doorway of our room at bedtime and sing folk songs that would take us out of the busy day and into that dreamy space where music thrives.

I took piano from the jolly lady down the street. And when I was old enough I joined the school band as a trombone player. I was interested in the Blues, and soon infatuated with Jazz and Bebop. One day I picked out a James Brown CD out of a bargain bin at Shopko. And then there was the landlord guy I found in the paper who was cleaning an apartment out and pretty much gave me a collection of hundreds of soul and jazz records. It was about that time that I joined a band that played original music and covers of Pearl Jam, Primus and Bob Marley. In that band I had my first experience singing on a stage. I was shy about it at first but after a little prodding I opened up and got to experience music coming through me. This type of thing has happened many times since. One such occasion was a Winter night when I was 22 years old.

My ballerina girlfriend was pregnant with our first baby, and I was heavy with responsibility and wondering why I was in music school. I went on a walk downtown and stopped at the Washington Street Pub to see how the open mic was going. It was limping along. Most of the dozen or so people in there were seated at the bar while the band labored along on the other side of an empty dance floor. After a couple tunes someone nudged me and sent me up on the stage to sing one. I met the drummer. It seemed like we had met before but I can't remember where. Someone handed me a red guitar and I sang Mustang Sally. Halfway through I went into a scat solo and lost all touch with the known world. I couldn't even hear my own voice. There was a comforting darkness and tiny lights all around me, some of them passing and some fading in and out. When I came back the people who had been at the bar were at the edge of the dance floor, all of them standing with their mouths open.

So I got some questions answered about my life's path that way, and graduated as a voice major a few years later. Not that everything you do that gets attention should be taken seriously. But when you find a simple way to link the mundane and the spirit world, you are responsible for having that tool and better learn how to use it. My girlfriend and I were married and had two more babies and built a cabin in the woods, where our youngest was born. We intend to start touring in 2010, performing together, after our dream house is done enough to move in to. A dream house for us means a simple house near a creek in the Huron Mountains with a dance hall in it. That way we can rehearse regularly without needing to go to town and find someone to watch the kids. And we can have parties, concerts, homeschool functions, yoga classes, meetings of angry villagers, etc. You can see how the building is coming at ourhouseonthecreek.blogspot.com. We welcome anyone who might want to come help for a day or two or forty-two, or just to check the place out.

Here's a link to the CD I released last year. You can hear all 16 tracks on CD Baby by clicking on the picture of my big head.

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