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From Tepees & Tomahawks, to Bikes, Buses & a lifelong adventure filled with Music!
I grew up in a small farm town in Ohio, USA and spent my summers living in a tepee doing living history reenactments with my family. It was a lot of Daniel Boone American frontiersmen type thing. I was throwing a tomahawk before I was even old enough to remember. And we cooked all of our meals over an open fire in a cast iron pot just like the early settlers did. We had to dress like them too, all in leather & wool. It was quite to my discomfort in those humid Summer days. But at night, around the campfire, when the adults broke out the instruments and broke into song it was pure bliss.
Looking back now, it makes sense that this childhood has led me to the road. When I graduated from Ohio University I moved from Ohio to California on a bicycle with just $600 and a guitar. I wrote a novel & soundtrack about that adventure, then moved into a 1970 VW Bus to tour America and share my story and promote my book & album. I documented that whole experience in my award winning film, "VW Bus Tour: Americana Bohemia".
After piecing my life together with odd jobs between stints on the road, I wanted something more. I wanted a chance at perfection. And I thought that chance at perfection might be in music. Specifically, the concept album I had been writing. It was an album where I could hear a horn and string section, and the warmth of a 2" tape machine with analogue recording. The only problem was, I was broke. But I did have a 1972 mustang convertible that I had restored over the years. And it was just collecting dust in a friend's barn. A year and a half after signing the title over to the engineer & owner of Ampreon Recorder in Youngstown Ohio, my Gypsy's tale told through 10 acts and an epilogue was complete. (Check out some of my music videos, one includes the mustang before I signed it away.)
As I write this in a friend's studio, I hear the pipes clank and rattle with the heat of steam. The raw artist studio is located in what was once a bread bakery in this old rust belt town of Youngstown. Water boils in a pot I bought from a second hand store that has since closed down. I'm cooking noodles on a hot plate. A hundred feet down the hall in a corner of the building sits the rusty sink where I'll have to drain them. I'm thankful for it all, for the place to crash while recording, and the life lived close to the bone. It's kept me honest & hungry. And now I'm hungry to get back on the road and share my music and story with the world.
(...and then there are my other 2 novels I'm still working on that complete the series "The Life of Riley". If only living the care free life cost a little less of the legal tender.)
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