We always had music around the house when I was growing up. My mom played piano but it was the music on the record player that grabed my ears. I was exposed to pop, folk, country, jazz, and rock and roll. Growing up in Mississippi I listened to a lot of soul music and country was pretty popular too. Our family moved to Southeast Missouri about the time I started High School. After graduation I moved to California to live with my dad in L.A. and started to learn to play guitar. It was blues that really made me want to learn to play and I was really into that for a couple of years. My dad and I moved to Austin, TX in 88. I was continuing College and hanging out.  I met some folks that were way into the Dead and I learned some improvisational skills playing with those folks. We had a dead cover band in Austin in the early 90’s, although “band” may not be the best way to describe what that was. Me and one of the guys from that group did a duo thing later where we played some original songs. I had been writing songs since before I could really even play. That segued into a couple different garage bands where we made up a lot of the music too. Singing wasn’t a big priority, but I liked writing songs.

I ended up moving up to Colorado where I had been working summers and in the early 90’s went to the Telluride Bluegrass Festival. I loved the music and it took a while but bluegrass ended up being the music I was most drawn to. I had been in lots of bands where there never was real focus on songs- things were mostly jams. I discovered a love of playing bluegrass at a time when I was frustrated with various aspects of playing electric music. I was drawn to the tight arrangements and succinctness of the tunes. I had come full circle from my dead days.

Sweet Sunny South started as a group of avid listeners of bluegrass—a few of us were DJs as well on public radio KVNF in Paonia. We started learning to play the music together and eventually turned down the road to Old-Time music. Along the way I had been writing songs or adapting older ones to what our group was doing. When we first started Sweet Sunny South I switched to playing mandolin (which has become my instrument of choice, and when we started playing more old time music I picked up the banjo and that’s where I am now. Writing songs and singing them, and playing mandolin and banjo in a Bluegrass/Old-Time group.  Playing this old music has stirred up a life long interest in history which has been making its way into my writing lately. I love all kinds of music.

I should also mention that I have two awesome young boys ages two and a half and five and they are the coolest. (Rowan and Jobim) Our bass player Laura Ingalls Wilder-n-Swingin (aka Shelley Gray) is my partner of 10 years and I’m really excited to be playing music with her. She puts the “Sweet” in Sweet Sunny South!

I play left handed. I had a lefty mandolin made for me by Johann Brentrup from Minneapolis Mn. It’s a wonderful instrument and just keeps getting better. Check his work out sometime at www.brentrup.com

The banjo I play belongs to a good friend, Ted Moniak. It’s a Stelling Plectrum “Sunflower” model and it is also a wonderful sounding instrument. I turned it upside down and restrung it. I tune it like a mandolin and pick it with a pick. I get some interest in what I’m doing with it—certainly not traditional but it seems to be becoming a definite part of our sound. I do aspire to learn to frail some day.