Autobiography ::
I grew up in Mount Olive, an exceptionally small town in a remote part of the most literary of Southern states and home of the blues—Mississippi. Far from urban and suburban life, with its movie theaters, shopping malls, and other quintessentially American preoccupations, I was free to entertain myself outdoors, exploring the town (unsupervised) on my bike, and indoors, playing our Baldwin upright piano as loudly as I could. My parents encouraged this, egging me on with vinyl records of 1970s songwriters like James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, and Randy Newman. This digest of folk singers was punctuated by a yearly pilgrimage to the great city of Jackson, MS for its Celtic Arts and Music Festival, where I joined the chorus of foot-stomping and loud whooping, wide-eyed with wonder at the beauty and power of shared music.
Moving from the piano, I picked up a guitar, survived a close encounter with punk rock music in middle school, and found myself in college forming a bluegrass band named for local topography—the Paris Mountain Pickers. Somewhere along that road, I began songwriting in the folk tradition of my youth.
Now in Washington, DC, I continue to ride my bike unsupervised, and after some initial culture shock, my rural soul has accepted its transplant into urban soil. In bars and coffee shops around the District, I perform honest songs that tell true stories about small towns, seasonal affective disorder, and migratory anomalies of Canadian geese, typically to warm and enthusiastic receptions.
2009 marked the release of my first independent record—Find Your Way Home—to local and familial acclaim. Its music grows from the fertile soil of my influences, the American folk/singer-songwriter tradition to Scotch/Irish jigs and reels, and African-American soul/Motown. Find Your Way Home is the beginning of what I hope will be a long and eclectic journey, starting, as it should, in the place from which I come. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
