While I would love to write this in the third person...I think we're beyond that. So, if it's ok with you, I'll just tell you a little about myself. Don't worry, I'm not going to start with "I was born in a bucolic Northern suburb of Chicago...a few miles south of the Wisconsin border..."
I consider myself lucky because my parents have excellent musical taste. I grew up listening to the exotic (to my ears) sounds of Indian Pop Music bouncing off our walls. My Dad's Sony turntable and my Mom's compact stereo...located only several feet away from each other, would both offer up the best of music to my young ears. When I was 5 I got my own turn table and became obsessed with LPs and 45s. I had the Popeye soundtrack on repeat and a McDonald's milk crate filled with 45s from Kenny Rogers and Neil Diamond. I would listen to these records in our music room and then at night would listen to my Dad playing the latest sitar records from India. During the day Vivaldi's Four Season's would often fill the house with the lush sounds of the English Chamber Orchestra and the mighty Pinchas Zukerman.
These sounds all melted together and I would evaporate into the melodies.
I feel that when I make music today that I am trying to reach back to that feeling I had when I was 5...when I was 8, that I would watch music raise all the hair on my arm from an unexpected melody or a chord change that would leave me leaping into the air. I hear echoes of these melodies in my songs and I am always curious to see what I will write about next. I oftentimes feel like I did when I was 14, waiting for a special package of baseball cards to arrive from Howard's Sport Collectibles. Except now I'm waiting by my guitar for just the right melody that will provide me the access code to a new song.
Once that code is unlocked I feel that same joy I did when I was hearing Jagjit and Chitra Singh harmonize or Pinchas Zukerman defy the limits of human talent on his fiddle...live, without a net. I hope that when you listen to my music, you hear those same echoes and that it welcomes you into my musical heart and that you are tempted to stop by to hear the story I have to share with you.
San Francisco, 2.8.23