Bob Dylan, Patty Griffin, the Clash, Bob Marley, Ruben Blades, Miles Davis, Joni Mitchell, Prince, the Fugees, Clifford Brown, Bjork, Tori Amos, Wayne Shorter, Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle, Bruce Springsteen, John Coltrane, Marvin Gaye, Lila Downs, Victor Jara, Patty Loveless, the Roots, Mavis Staples, Keith Jarrett, Sydney Carter, Ned Sublette, Rakim, Outkast, Stevie Wonder, Max Roach, Bruce Cockburn, Eddie Palmieri, Neil Young.
I started out playing music like Bob Dylan's and Joni Mitchell’s on piano and guitar, listening to piano jazz, and writing my own material, which was lyric-centered, piano-driven, jazz-inflected, and fairly political. Then things got complicated as I began to listen to the Clash, Bob Marley, and various hip-hop, Latin, and jazz artists. Although I never played in bands that tried to reproduce their sounds, these artists’ polyrhythms and sensibilities got into my playing, so that I don't sound like any folkie singer-songwriter that I know (although I try to learn from genre-benders like Patty Griffin, Joe Strummer, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Bragg, and Tori Amos.) I perform originals, alt-country “cry-in-your-beer”-type standards, and miscellaneous songs I like. In my other life I'm a university professor who studies US cultural history and left-of-center religious activism, and I'm no slouch at doing "edutainment"-type performances touching on my research.
