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So many influences... Where do I begin? From before I was born living in a house filled with music, my mother singing as she went about her day, singing me to sleep, singing my brothers & sisters to sleep. Music on the stereo: all the great classic stuff of the 60's & 70's. Since my Mom had been a teenager in San Francisco during the early 60's scene & was also a musician, the household playlist was heavily weighted with music that grew out of that scence: Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, Otis Redding, The Band, Crosby, Stills, & Nash, Neil Young, Grateful Dead, The Doors, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Cat Stevens, Rolling Stones, Beatles, John Lennon, plus Joan Baez & other folk-based music. In addition, the playlist was considerably balanced by classical music: Bach, Beethoven, Handel, Hayden, Vivaldi, Mozart, & Verdi - lots of Verdi.

Once I got into music on my own I rediscovered much of the same material, although I leaned more heavily in the Dylan, Joplin, Band, Hendrix, Vaughan, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd & Doors direction. Southern-based rock like Lynyrd Skynyrd, Allman Brothers, Steve Earle became fundamentally important & still are. At around age 13 I began seriously writing songs and playing the guitar, gaining a deeper understanding of artists like Bessie Smith, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and delving into a passionate journey of discovery that lead into almost every conceivable source for early Blues & Americana music, especially with the wonderful resources provided from & by legends like Alan Lomax… and all the other Smithsonian Recordings recently made widely available again on CD (Vinyl IS JUST BETTER, but what can you do!? Especially sitting here writing that 'Analog' is better than 'Digital' on myspace… kinda funny).

The blues was like this thing that instantaneously when I listened felt like it was already implanted in my soul. Artists like Lead Belly, John Lee Hooker, Buddy Guy, Howlin' Wolf, Bessie Smith, Janis Joplin, Otis Redding, Albert King, Muddy Waters, Big Bill Bronzy, and as I already mentioned Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan are simply giants to me. Musically, they represent everything I aspire to and more. The jazz of musicians like John Coltrane, Django Reinhardt, Charlie Parker & Miles Davis will also always remain at the top of my influences list. Their work has, and always will, blow me away.

Along with my close friends, I had gotten seriously into early punk music, and then when Nirvana came on the scene when I was about 10 or 11 it was instant rapport; they represented a synthesis of so much that had been going on in my own mind, in the culture. Kurt Cobain is without a doubt one of the greatest songwriters of all time.

Along with the soundtrack of my life (& the fact that music IS my life), my passion runs like the Nile for literature, poetry, history, current events & politics. Early on I read everything Jack Kerouac ever wrote, devoured the work of poets like Baudelaire & Rimbaud, ploughed through the works of Ed Abbey (becoming obsessed with the country round' the 4-Corners region) and then just kept going. There are many authors who have deeply influenced my life.

Green Lands - Nathaniel Street-West LIVE

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Heaven Below - Nathaniel Street-West LIVE

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