bio

Gestated in the year of assassinations marinating in an alkaloid-filled womb

Dad sure smoked a lot filling up yellow legal pads for a book about historical Wyoming never written all while listening to endless repeats of the collective works of Hadyn and Mozart, The Stanley Brothers, Doc Watson, Mac Weisman, Flatt and Scruggs, The Carter Family, and Bill Monroe

Tormented as a young man by the cover art of his two sisters' 500+ vinyl collection and the thousands-of-arrangements-in-search-of-music hidden behind the gatefold earnest faces and floating cities (also, the incomprehensible sounds of one sister's Philly Greek boyfriend practicing Charlie Parker tunes on the pedal steel)

Squeaked out some miserable notes on the clarinet marching one step ahead of a drum line playing a frenzied arrangement of ELP's "Tarkus"

Fell asleep at a Molly Hatchet/Triumph concert in 1985

At a local music store, a future guitar tech for the Doobie Brothers played Bad Brains' "Re-Ignition" on the store's record player to begin grooming me for his Minutemen rip-off band (it worked but is there anything more missing-the-point than a band ripping of the Minutemen? Still, "Hazard Light" was a pretty cool tune)

Kicked out of Beats The Hell Out of Me for not having the slightest idea how to play bass

Stole a funk riff in an ice cream store in Fairbanks Alaska sitting in on "Here's That Rainy Day"

Turned on to Cafe Bustelo between recording tracks for Machines of Loving Grace by the improbably non-Cuban Sylvia Massy

etc.