about
I Hit The Highways
I found a guitar when I was ten years old and the old man said, "If you can tune it-you can keep it". At 14, I took the guitar and 38 cents and hit the road. Teaching my illiterate self to read from highway billboards and always searching I crossed the U.S. four times garnering friends, adventures and unique survival skills. The friends are diverse and my songs reflect it. In them, and in my stories, you'll meet motorcycle maniacs, The Chief, "Chicken Bone", Bourbon Street women and other kind women who helped me find my way.
I hung with Hippies, but never was one. I had to work to survive so stayed clean cut and careful. My guitar was always in my hand songs always in my head. Once I got picked up by a small band bus, then invited to be their set-up man. When I got caught picking' a little, the band leader put me on stage and told me to play "Wildwood Flower" then yelled, "Don't stop!". I hid my face behind a huge hat but as the nights, stages and "flat tops" kept coming I grew into it.
The Wall....
By the time I returned to Virginia I had seen and done it all. My songs all derive from my life and my loves. I've worked pretty much everything - I can lay you a fancy brick walk, wire your building for electricity, build you a house for that matter but always the music was there. I had a band, recorded original songs, married a couple of times and then the music stopped. For 40 years I gave it up but I maintained a marriage, raised a family and learned to write.
Dreams Come True
Change, the one thing you can always count on, cracked open the door to my first love, my music. Forty years ago I was invited to Nashville....and never went. I stayed home and did what I thought was right. With family all gone I got another chance and when I showed up I was remembered. Now some of the finest musicians in Nashville back me and my old guitar and a brilliant engineer puts us together just right.
My music...
I still have one of my first guitars. I have a lot of guitars - I love them all, use them in different ways but my Gibson Epiphone has been in as many "incidents" as I have and when she got smashed I always put her back together. The truth is, if she could talk, I'd have to burn her... she's seen a lot of sin. She's my favorite axe and I'll always love her earthy maturity.