the electric fan years
In 1965, I was born and then raised, in Colorado Springs, Colorado. One of my earliest memories of singing (I was about six or seven years old) is when my dad brought home, for the weekend, a PA system from the office of my family's greeting card company. I remember spending hours singing "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head." At weekend's end, the PA went back to the office never to return. I can only guess my parents had enough "raindrops" to last a lifetime. After that, I resorted to singing "Close to You" into the electric fan.

the electric kool-aid years
In the years that followed I would frequent a sing-along piano bar called the Golden Bee in Colorado Springs and belt out "Babyface" and "New York, New York" in an Ethel Mermanish fashion. Then, in my more rockin' University of Wisconsin, Madison years I bought a tiny portable keyboard. I wrote one song that had a number of profanities interspersed throughout. I gave one Jägermeister-infused "public performance" of that song in front of extended family. I believe that incidence, in particular, put singing, songwriting and electric-beverage-performances to bed for awhile.

the electric clavinova years
In September 2001, my uncle, Dusty, was coming here, to Houston, for treatment at MD Anderson Hospital. He and my aunt, Kathy, were always musically inspiring. (I remember my uncle singing "Danny Boy," so robustly in the shower, you could hear him from outside his house and across the street.) I didn't want them to visit us in a "pianoless" house so just before they arrived I headed out to buy some kind of piano.

This visit happened to coincide with my own looming midlife crisis. And on December 24th of that year we lost my uncle. I believe the best way to honor someone’s life is pick up the mantle, so to speak, and carry on with whatever passions you shared with them. So having purchased a Yamaha Clavinova and desperately needing a creative outlet, I poured myself into writing songs and singing non-stop.