I was born on Woody Guthrie's birthday in 1951. This event took place in an unair conditioned hospital in Alva, OK, when the temperature was 116F. Also, I was breech and making no sounds or signs of life when being spanked on the buttocks. . .my first Near Death Experience. . . And, although this doesn't qualify one for paying anywhere near the kinds of dues Woody had to, it certainly must have given me some kind of mystical connection to him, even though I really never came to know of him or his body of work until I was about 21. At this point I was a Woody junky from then on. Consequently, he's the songwriter most represented in my catalog of material, and the author of seven songs on this CD.
In the early seventies I played in a country-western band as the lead guitar player. And, although I knew I wasn't a lead player, that was my job. I never considered myself a singer until the mid-to-late seventies when Prof. Bill Koch, The Singing Cowboy, of K-State encouraged me.
I've been playing folk music, old country, Woody songs, John Prine, a few pop songs, and a few originals ever since. My playing and vocals and spirit are influenced by blues, rock, bluegrass, and by anything now considered Americana as well.
I'm an English teacher by trade. So doing that and raising two kids sidelined music for most of my life. But along the way I've struggled and paid some dues in the school of hard knocks. I've worked on farms and ranches most of my life, and in my younger days, hitchhiked around six thousand miles, and fought every fist fight I ever fought until the cops came. Then, somehow, have been divorced more times than I'd like to remember. But, through it all or after it all, as a professional educator have managed to be a good roll model and teacher/coach to thousands of kids.
Recently, with the encouragement of my wife Rebecca, I have been playing music, mostly just me and a couple of guitars, at ice cream freezins, church specials and socials, talent shows, open mics, house parties, festivals, and a few clubs and honky tonks. A friend of ours, John Herron, asked me to come out to his Rekordio recording studio in L. A. to make a record. He only had to mention it twice, and we were California bound! John's a lifetime, God-gifted professional musician who's played with nearly everyone you could name in the rock/country/folk scene, esp. rock. His first big band was the Electric Prunes. His most recent world tour was with Johnny Rivers (which nearly killed him--but that's his story), and his most recent hook up is with Chuck E. Weiss and his work at Rekordio. So, John is a big influence on this record. And, he found exactly the musician friends of his to play the songs exactly as I always heard them in my head when I was playing them alone.
The musicians John got together were world-class and fun to be around as well. Rick Shlosser, the drummer, had a business card that unfolded about 20 times to mention "some" of the people he had played with! Zeke Zirngiebel had put tracks down on Korn's next CD the day before he did a 360 and played country-folk with me. John's engineer, Matt Quave, was working for Snoop Dog the weekend he was listening to Way Over Yonder before the final tweaking of it--hence the in-your-face vocals and enhanced bass you get here if your stereo has those capabilities. Greg Sutton had done time with Bob Dylan, and Mark "Pocket" Goldberg, Cody Le Pow, and Teresa James were equally as heavy.
On this CD I played acoustic guitar on every track. I used either a six string Lincoln, 12 string Alvarez, or an electric-acoustic 12 string Talkamine. This record is exactly as I hoped it would be or better. If I could have added anything, it might be my own vocal or guitar overdubs in places, more John Prine, more originals, more bluegrass instruments like dobro, fiddle, mandolin, and banjo; and more old, country style songs. But that might lend itself to my second CD. . .
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