I'm a singer/songwriter from the Niagara region who has been playing the bars and clubs of this area for over 30 years. I did some band work in the past, and that was a lot of fun, but for the past ten years or so I've just gone back to using my trusty 12-string and my voice. In the spring of 2005 I finally finished recording my debut album, Ghosts, and so far the reaction to it has been incredibly positive. I wanted to keep it simple and straightforward, like the early records of my musical hero, Gordon Lightfoot, and I was really pleased with how everything turned out. I hope to start work on the next album in the coming year, which like my current one will contain a mixture of old and new songs, but will hopefully be a bit sunnier in tone. I still enjoy performing a great deal - it's still one of the favourite things in my life.
I learned how to play the guitar when I was about fifteen, and started writing songs almost immediately. I'm completely self-taught. I don't know how to read music at all, except for chord charts. I entered a few talent contests and played a few highschool functions, and I was pretty much hooked. It changed my life and gave me something I could be proud of and believe in, and girls liked it, and the songwriting was a great outlet for me.
I started playing bars professionally in 1979, and things just took off from there. I got job after job, many of them in the tourist section of my city, and I quickly learned that people loved listening to my music. I started out solo, but soon got into a Neil Young/California rock trio called Decade, and we did really well for many years. That was all acoustic, with three guitars and three-part harmony vocals. Eventually we went our separate ways as we got older, and I formed a two-man band with a great local lead guitar player named Rich Morton. We called ourselves Desert Son, and that was mainly an electric act focusing on classic rock and some blues. I bought a telecaster and a Marshall amp, and rocked out for five years until a slump in the economy caused us to lose all of our regular gigs in the space of about two months, so I went back to playing solo. Except for some gigs with some seasoned buddies of mine in a band called the Funkings, it's been that way pretty much ever since. I did do a sort of one-man band thing for awhile after Rich and I quit, still using a Portastudio for the bass and drum tracks, and still playing my tele, but I found it to be too much work after awhile and I just prefered the simplicity of my acoustic and just myself, and it was more of a challenge to me too.
I've been playing the Niagara region for a long time, and still play regularly on weekends, and more often during the summer tourist season. I've had a lot of great times over the years, and the experiences have been fantastic, for the most part. It's nice to meet people from all over the world who enjoy my music. The memories are a bit fuzzy from my band days, but I'm older now and still having a great time doing what I love to do best.
I love all kinds of music, and still listen to a lot of new rock, but my roots lie in the music of Gordon Lightfoot, who I grew up listening to, and the British folk-rock scene of the late 60's/early 70's, which included Sandy Denny and Fairport Convention, Nick Drake, Cat Stevens and The Strawbs. I've been modelling my own recordings on the stripped down records of Lightfoot's early career, and the recent Rick Rubin-produced recordings of Johnny Cash. The Beatles, and particularly John Lennon, are also major factors in there somewhere, as is Jim Croce, artists who are now gone and who I sadly miss.
My main stage gear right now is a Takamine G-series 12-string guitar, which I bought to replace my aging Ovations, one of which was stolen, and the other of which was causing me a lot of difficulty onstage due to the heat and humidity of so many outdoor gigs. One day I may go back to a new Ovation, or a Taylor. I run the guitar and my vocals, through a Fender Acoustasonic Junior amp with built-in effects, I find it is plenty loud enough for most of my gigs. I use two effects pedals, a Marshall Supervibe Stereo Chorus and an older model Yamaha Digital Delay. The second channel of the Marshall chorus is run through a small Fender powered monitor, which gives me a beautiful stereo chorus sound onstage. The delay pedal is mainly to add atmosphere and presence on certain songs. My microphone is the industry standard, a Shure SM-58, and there isn't a better mic out there for a working musician. My aim is to use the smallest set-up possible to get the biggest sound, and this current one fulfills that need for the most part. The only addition I can think of for a bigger sound is to use two of the Fender amps in tandem.
Please have a listen to my tunes, which are all based on personal experiences. I put a lot of myself and my recent tribulations into my debut CD, and I think many people will be able to relate to the things I express there. It's completely honest and from the heart.
