I've been playing the guitar since I was eight, when my dad forced me to study the classical guitar. I don't know why I didn't quit because I hated every minute of it. I diddled along at the classical style for a few years until I joined my first band in high school. It was 1974, and we played bluegrass, which was pretty normal for kids growing up in Alabama. The guy who played the banjo had this really cool colored abalone inlay on the back of his axe (do you call a banjo an axe?) which depicted a sort animated looking skeleton wearing a crown of roses. Odd. I asked him about it one day. He then showed me where the picture came from - an album cover - and then he took the record out, put it on the platter, and put the needle down...We never played another bluegrass tune. 

In 1978, I saw the Dead for the first time when I was a sophomore at Colgate University. They played in the hockey rink, which was terrible for the acoustics but great for the atmosphere. David Grisman opened for them and then came out later and jammed on a few, and I was blown away. I had, by then, heard many tapes of live shows, and I was in the process of wearing down the grooves on Wake of the Flood, but seeing them do their thing live was truly inspirational. My room-mate, Doug (a fantastic drummer), and I put together a band soon after that. We played together for seven years, first in Colorado, and then in San Francisco, when life started demanding that we grow up.  

I lived in the lower Haight for eight years, from 1981-1989, during which time I went to grad school at San Francisco State U. for a master's degree in applied linguistics, and I essentially quit playing seriously. Doug and I would get a few Deadheads together every Friday night and jam a little, but it couldn't really go anywhere. But, I never missed an opportunity to take in a Dead show. And there were plenty of them. My favorite place to see them was the Greek Theater in Berkeley. 

I've been in lots of bands, and played with lots of different kinds of folks, blah, blah, blah. I think the one I'm most proud of is when I played with Luther "Guitar Junior" Johnson - the blues great from Greenwood, MS (my mother's hometown). I was the guitarist for his house band at his club, The Rynborn, in Antrim, NH. I absolutely love the blues, and he is one of the best. No matter how many times I heard him sing, he always gave me a lump in the throat. What a gorgeous voice and a beautiful man.  

Anyway, as I told Michael the first time I sat in with Grateful Groove, I have been looking for these guys for thirty years, and I am really glad I found them. I've put in a lot of time as a human juke box; it's good to be able - at last! - to play some music that matters.