Who/what inspires your music? 

Anything I experience, good or bad, that deserves resolution or understanding or celebration. Music has a unique ability to be intellectual and also give regard to our physical experience of the world, the insights that our bodies and emotions are trying to communicate about the world within and around us.  

 

How would you describe your sound? 

In general, stripped down, three-chord percussive acoustic blues/country/folk. But I will veer off and experiment with whatever sound fits a song or just out of curiosity.  

 

If you could open for any musician/band, who would it be? 

Kris Kristofferson. I love the atmosphere at his shows and how his audiences engage with his music. Cindy Lee Berryhill would also be great to open for.  

 

What does making music mean to you? What got you into it/keeps you continuing? 

Music has always fascinated me and brought me endless pleasure and when I first saw The Rolling Stones on TV, I instantly began creating songs, just words I would sing into a cassette recorder, but I had to be involved with that in some way. It is one of the absolute best things in life.  

 

How do you keep yourself motivated and inspired? 

There is still suffering and conflict and loss in the world, pain and grief, ignorance and intolerance. And that’s just MY Saturday. Music and creativity bring peace, healing and celebration to me personally on a daily basis. And every now and then someone will share their appreciation for something I created. No matter how much loss and disappointment I've experienced I see no point in giving up on the highest ideals and personal enjoyment as long as I'm alive, music and creativity offer something towards that.  

 

Which song of yours was the most fun to write & make?  

Fun question. Every song has its own creation story that I enjoy recalling. The one that jumps to mind in this instant is “Oh, my my.” Just over a year ago I wrote Neil Young to thank him for and ask a question about the first time I had heard his music and he actually responded! It really brought that initial moment and feeling back to me very intensely. And I found myself just pouring out that experience and energy into words and then a theme started to show itself, the power of rock and roll, spanning rock history from Danny and The Juniors to Kurt Cobain all pointing back to Neil’s song “My my, Hey hey.” This also opened up yet another theme.... suicide. Not a very cheerful subject of course, but it was a subject I was oddly familiar with at an early age, not people I knew personally, but I just heard about it a lot and of course anything can seem normal at age 7, but I see how unusual that was now. It was incredibly satisfying to approach the process irrationally and have it send me back something that has all these layers of meaning to me personally, tied together to very different and important experiences in my life while also reflecting things in our culture. I should probably send Neil another message of thanks. 

 

What is your creative process like? Is it more organized & session based or more sporadic and fleeting?  

More sporadic. The general process though is that something will affect me, and then I will have a basic idea and a key word or phrase which will bring some sort of physical sensation that gives me a sense of the rhythm. Then I enjoy taking walks and finding the rest of the words for verses and choruses. For “Mockingbird”, I walked a trail in the Rockies, which was beautiful but also very demanding. It required calculated thinking at times and allowed, or encouraged really, non-linear thinking at other times. It was so great for the writing process.........and the trail even served as a metaphor. It should probably get a writing credit.  

 

What is your current big goal? What does the future hold/what are you working towards right now? 

I would really love to get back to some live performances next year, maybe in spring at coffeehouses, if I can find any. I’m also having a lot of fun lately revisiting, organizing and appreciating the stuff I did years ago with my friend Jack and our band. Always got my mind on whenever I might get back to Milwaukee and we can create some more. I also have a couple friends who left behind parts of songs with hopes I might find a way to complete them which I feel very honored to be trusted with and hope to finish those songs soon. And I am always enjoying inspiration and playing around with some new stuff of my own, following that wherever it takes me.  

Thanks so much to you and everyone at Yarn Bomb for the great things you are doing to support the creative spirit.