Hello, I'm Johnny Cash.
I love that. Who the hell needs a bio when you can just walk up to a microphone and say, "Hello, I'm a big, mean so-and-so who's gonna sing you some songs I wrote about trains and God and murder. So, shut up and listen, or I'll kick your ass."
Unfortunately, when I say, "Hello, I'm Lester Norton," only a couple folks say, "THE Lester Norton?" So, I have to write a bio (which I'm getting to, just hold your horses).
I was born in the frigid wilderness of Maine. Bangor to be exact. It's smack in the middle of the state, which means it's in the middle of nowhere (as opposed to the coast of nowhere or the southeastern corner of nowhere.) While you may have heard it mispronounced by the late, great Roger Miller in his song "King of the Road", it's BangOR, not BangER. (People from Bangor are still pretty sore about that, let me tell you.) When you grow up with that kind of chip on your shoulder, you have to find a creative outlet for it. Otherwise, you'll wind up knocking over a liquor store for quarters to feed your Asteroids obsession or explosively decompressing in the middle of a meeting with clients, and there goes 20 years of hard work as a research assistant for the owner of the largest lobster pound in New England. So, I took up music and formed a band.
Curse you, Roger Miller.
Now, you might think that someone who shared a home town with Stephen King for so many years might be tempted to write songs about vampires and undead cats. But I leave that sort of thing to Jewel. My songs are more akin to those paintings that you see where the artist picks up a pail of whatever's handy and throws it at the wall. There are some pretty nifty patterns that show up when you chuck a bucket and see what sticks. I set my bucket chucking to music is all.
"Like Sailors Do" is my first CD. (At least, it's the first one I can sell without paying royalties to a bunch of other songwriters.) It contains some nifty hooks and some interesting lyrics that will be fun for the whole family. The music comes from years of collecting "whatever's handy" and storing it in my wee brain. So, you'll hear a little Neil Young, some Warren Zevon, Bob Dylan, Bob Seger, a little folk, a little country, a little blues, and of course, a little Johnny "Hello I'm Johnny Cash" Cash. And because my dad taught me how to play the guitar in a half-way decent fashion, you'll hear a lot of that, too. In fact, I played all of the instruments on this record (or "platter" as you kids say.)
I currently reside with my wife, two kids and four cats in the middle of Florida, which is almost as nowhere as Maine, just a hell of a lot warmer.
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