 I was born in Chicago long enough ago to remember the great snowstorm of '67. I got to miss a week of school, and we took my sled instead of our gold convertible Pontiac LeMans (which didn't do too well on snow) to the Jewel supermarket. This was my second favorite vehicle, next to the silver and red one-speed Schwinn bike I rode, housed each winter in the garage whose door I pitched imaginary baseball games against every summer. I loved baseball as a kid, and was convinced I'd grow up to play first base for the White Sox one day (my older sister adopted the Cubs, so I had to send my loyalties to the south side, even though we lived on the north). My dad was the Maitre D' at Chicago's Chez Paree nightclub, and my mother was a big band singer. I had a crush on the McGuire Sisters. All three of them.
My first job as a busboy at Arlington Park Racetrack when
I was 13 saw me work there every summer through high school
(Skokie, IL) where my music teacher was Frank Winkler, the
great jazz pianist and former keyboardist for acts like Sinatra,
Peggy Lee and Sammy Davis Jr. We're still in touch and Frank
sits in with me when I sing in Chicago (not bad - the guy
who used to tell me to spit out my gum is now my sideman).
Went downtown to Wabash Street with my best friend Judd when
I was a senior and paid a couple hundred bucks for a new Gibson
B-25 guitar with a sunburst top - my first lick - "Daytripper"
by the Beatles. The first song I labored to learn was "April
Come She Will" by Simon & Garfunkel.
On to the University of Illinois, the shadows of Steve Goodman
and Dan Fogelberg still on the walls at the Red Herring Coffeehouse
in Urbana where I first began to pull the red guitar out of
its case in public. Judd and I did a "Duet for Two Tennis
Rackets" at their Fall Folk Festival one year, and my album
collection contained discs by Goodman, John Prine, Fogelberg,
Shel Silverstein, Gordon Lightfoot, Bruce Cockburn, Paul Simon,
Carole King, Cat Stevens, Jackson Browne, James Taylor, Alan
Sherman, Tony Bennett, and Mel Torme among others. I'd probably
also borrowed a Peter, Paul & Mary disk or two from my sister
on occasion, but passed on her Peter & Gordon, Chad & Jeremy,
Freddie and the Dreamers, Herman’s Hermits, Paul Revere and
the Raiders, Gene Pitney, Gary Lewis and the Playboys, Gerry
and the Pacemakers LPs. Wrote my first song on Valentine's
Day in 1974, during a semester of college in southern France.
Mercifully, I've forgotten it.
Upon graduation (a degree in Radio/TV Communications) I took
a job as a copywriter at a small ad agency in Anchorage, Alaska
as one half of the creative department (2 people) at a place
called Graphix West. I was the writer and the also newly-hired
artist Jon Van Zyle (www.jonvanzyle.com) did the artwork and
layout. I remember being thrilled being paid to write, and
I used to stay late sometimes - I enjoy working when no one
else is around. My advertising career lasted exactly five
months when I lost my interest (which I've since wondered
how I ever had in the first place) in advertising and resigned.
Twenty three years old, and over to Moby Dick's Lounge on
Fourth Avenue in Anchorage, where I'd heard that they were
looking for someone to play music during Happy Hour "because
Kitty was leaving". I walked in and borrowed Kitty's electric
guitar and played the first two verses of "Part of the Plan"
by Dan Fogelberg (may he rest in peace) and got my first professional
music job, 4-6 PM Mondays thru Thursdays - by day, a watering
hole for the local naval and army bases and by night, an exotic
dancer club (the dancers tended bar during my shift). I stayed
in Alaska for three years and after 3 months of happy hours
went on to work as a corrections counselor (juvenile facility)
for the Department of Health and Social Services, an actor
for the Alaska Repertory Theater, and front man for a country-rock/bluegrass
band called "Kicks".
Rewind...while still in college in Illinois, my friend Jim
and I went and saw "The Man Who Would Be King" based on a
short story by Rudyard Kipling. We've known one another since
fourth grade, that night were inspired to have a big travel
adventure one day, and when we were 26, I left Alaska, Jim
took leave of his law practice in Chicago, and we procured
one-way tickets from Los Angeles to Sydney, Australia. I bought
a red round-backed plastic/metal guitar for this trip which
not only served to introduce us to free hotel rooms, new friends,
meals, and extra money at all the right times, but even survived
getting run over by a car while we hitchhiked on the South
Island of New Zealand.
Thus I traveled from Los Angeles to New York City the hard
way (going west) and ended up at Newark Airport in the summer
of 1980 and thought I’d try Manhattan for a while. I went
down to Greenwich Village one Monday night where I stumbled
into Folk City and the Cornelia Street Cafe to meet some of
the singer songwriters of the day...Jack Hardy, Brian Rose,
Suzanne Vega, David Massengill, Cliff Eberhardt, Tom Intondi,
Rod MacDonald, Shawn Colvin, Lucy Kaplanski, Josh Joffen,
and anybody else who happened to be passing through New York
City with a guitar and an idea.
I was hooked, intimidated, intrigued, addicted, and an obvious
neophyte, but at Cornelia Street and at Jack Hardy's, everyone
who showed up to these gatherings would only play a "work
in progress". It wasn't a showcase for greatest hits or polished
jewels, rather the rawest and most recent writing that anyone
was willing to put out in front of the group. My "visit" to
New York City lasted a decade, and my Monday nights of open
mikes and all night-cafes proved to be an inspiring songwriting
workplace and training ground. I had a lot of part time jobs
during this time, including wearing a sandwich sign on Broadway,
temping in factories and offices, waiting tables, working
in high-end hotels, and later on as an audio engineer at United
Nations Radio and ABC-TV.
I came up for air and entered the Kerrville Folk Festival's
songwriting contest in Texas in 1985. Got as far as making
the list of forty finalists. Came back from that festival
thinking about what I'd learned hearing people like Chuck
Pyle, Steve Gillette, Pierce Pettis, Jon Ims, Mike Williams,
LJ Booth, and many others for the first time. I entered again
the next year and earned another trip (and many since) to
Texas, now on my way to becoming a better songwriter. A friend
holding up a walkman tape recorder in the audience during
that contest gave me what turned out to be the demo tape I
used to get bookings for almost two years.
Towards the end of my time in NYC I also met a man named Mark
Tucker who had a business called Awakening Heart Productions.
He'd been traveling all around the country for years showing
inspirational multimedia programs to audiences that included
the U.S. Congress, Pentagon, National Geographic, Kodak, Harvard,
Princeton, Yale, countless conferences, retreats, churches,
and places of every kind and configuration. He'd heard a couple
of my songs and invited me on a Florida tour where we ended
up doing shows in 30 cities in 31 days, and here I'd found
another audience in addition to folk folks. This proved a
springboard to more work as a musician and presenter at a
variety of conferences, symposiums, camps, workshop centers,
retreats, and special events of all kinds, and I said goodbye
to the last of my part time jobs in December of 1987.
I tried to do many of the other things my parents preferred
me to do over the years, but I always came back to song, voice,
and guitar. As Confucius said "If you choose a job that you
love, you'll never work another day in your life.
Why was he called "Confucius"?
He should have been called "Clarity-boy".
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