Biography
I grew up in Dunkirk, NY, near Buffalo. My
initiation to music performance was trumpet lessons in elementary school and
high school. However, like every other male with
a pulse in the late 60s I wanted to play guitar. My first guitar was a
very cheap plywood "folk guitar" that had string action like a hardboiled egg slicer. My mother worked for
Montgomery Ward and got discounts there, so my next instruments were Airline brand guitars from Wards. When I was
14 my parents bought me an electric guitar (that I still have)
and amp, and I learned the chords and riffs from the
Beatles, Stones, and Zeppelin songs.
But I also began to notice other music.
My two older sisters played records at
home
and I got to hear Jobim and Johnny
Mathis, and these musical styles started
to appeal to me.
When I was 15 I was fortunate to meet guitar player Tom Gestwicki,
who remains a dear friend despite the 2500 miles
or so
between us. Tom was a rocker but a closet jazzer, and I was
really inspired when I heard him play chord-melody
jazz solos. Tom also introduced me to the wedding reception gig
circuit which was really big in the Buffalo area in the
pre-DJ days. I joined the
musician's union when I was 17 and Tom said "list yourself as a bass
player too --
it's like the first four strings on a guitar." So I did,
and quickly got a call to play bass with a polka band. The only
problem was that I did not own a bass and had
never even played one! I bought a used Fender Jazz Bass two weeks
before the gig and borroweed Tom's Ampeg bass amp for
the night (I later bought it from him and still have it).
After playing bass and guitar
in various bands I moved to playing guitar in rock cover bands between 1973-78. Sound Odyssey
was the first band that required that I sing, and we did some harmonies
that I still recall fondly. The band name came from the current hit movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey
,
which sounded like a good idea except that no one (including the
band
members) could spell "Odyssey." The bass player and I later
joined
another band with Tom Gestwicki, the Joey Allen Combo, which became Driftwood when Joey left the band. This was a great gig and we played every
Friday and Saturday at the Rainbow Inn in Dunkirk, which helped me pay
for, but not study for, college. I had to leave the group
when I went to
graduate school in Tennessee in 1978.
While I continued to play guitar at
home, my performing days didn't start again until 1991 when I lived in
Houston. That was when a co-worker, Dan Carson, asked if I could
fill in with his rock band, Sphinx, that had lost their bass player. One thing led to another and Dan and I were performing as a duo, The Sphinx Brothers,
playing original sarcastic acoustic ("sarcoustic") songs.
In 1995 we recorded an album, I Annoy You (And Other Love Songs),
that got airplay on some local radio stations. The duo
lasted until 1998 when Dan moved to Delaware. In an odd twist of
fate I also ended up in Delaware a year later and The Sphinx Brothers
were reunited on the East Coast. We also met Dale Trusheim, a
drummer with a similarly twisted sense of humor, and the duo became a
trio. This led to a second album in 2003, Not Your Regular Cowboys.
In 2005 I moved to Richland, WA and decided
to pursue something that I had considered for quite a while, to play
jazz and other instrumental styles. And that's where the story stands!