About | Mysite

About (more than you wanted to know...)

I was born in Oregon and lived there through 2nd grade, but don't remember too much about it. I remember riding my bike to 1st Grade when we lived in Tillamook.

We moved to Pasco, WA the summer before 3rd Grade because my dad got a string teaching job there. That's where we lived all through my MS and HS days. I went to college at EWSC in Cheney, WA for a couple of years, studying Classical music. My hair was real long at that point. I remember wanting to change something about the way I was learning music, because everything I played was on a printed page. I left school to pursue something...

I was playing with some local musicians in Salem, OR when I met a guy named Hal Buckingham in 1972. We just clicked when we played together, so we decided to start a band. We named it Starberry, and hit the road in my '50 Studebaker. Hal had been spending the winters in Tucson and summers in Oregon.

We arrived in AZ and went south to the California Gulch, close to Arivaca. Stayed there awhile until we realized we wouldn't make any money until we went to Tucson, so we went there and started playing in the bars, trying to survive. We met this guy named Stephen, who wanted to be our manager. He set up a recording session in LA, so we went there to Larrabee Sound, Studio B. This was 1973. We got a decent recording for what it was, with just a single take. No overdubbing, the budget route. Hal and I actually got to play at the Troubador at some kind of an open mic night. Nothing special, but I wonder who may have been there?

After we made it back to Tucson, Stephen wanted us to go to his brother's place in upstate NY. We went there in our bus (a converted '49 GMC school bus) with a bass player and started working on stuff. Stephen thought we were going to make him a bunch of money, but before our stay was up, we didn't really dig what was going on, so we ended our relationship with him. We stayed in upstate NY for a while playing music up there. It was beautiful, roughly the same latitude as OR (42nd Parallel N).

We made it back to AZ, and spent another couple of years going back and forth to OR. At some point we decided to visit Albuquerque, NM, where we had always wanted to check out. We arrived there on the Bi-Centennial Day, July 4th of 1976. I remember thinking how bizarre that was!

We fit right in to the Albuquerque scene in the University district with all the headshops, organic eateries and cool clubs. We continued to play around there, and at one of those gigs, I met my future wife, Connie. We hit it off right away and have been together ever since. That was in 1977. Life was happening all around and it was hard to make a living, so Starberry kind of disbanded. Hal hooked up with a lady and left the area. We stuck around and I continued to play music. Connie and I got married in October of 1979. We were paying cheap rent so I was able continue playing music. Eventually I got a gig with DJ Cookin', a band that worked all the time. We even got to go to Hawaii with that band. Good times!

That band folded after awhile and, through a friend that I had played with in another band, was offered a position to play with Ray Price. I went to Dallas (1982) and auditioned with the band, passed, and became a Cherokee Cowboy.

I played with him, while living in Albuquerque, so I'd have to drive to Dallas to get on the bus. I was able to keep this up for 14 months. I returned to Albuquerque and continued to play music. After some hard times and decisions, I needed a change. After becoming a born-again Christian, I decided to go back to school (1985) to get my degree in Music Education (1988). I would become a string teacher, just like my father before me. I had a great time in school, learned a lot, pursued a job, and ended up in Wichita, KS in 1990.

I taught El. Strings and MS Orchestra for 21+ years, and am now retired. I continue to play in a few different bands, whose schedules, surprisingly enough, rarely conflict. It's a lot of variety and that's what keeps it interesting!

And here we are, in a pandemic in 2020!