I have been writing songs and music for guitars for over fifty years. Some of it has been performed by local Indiana groups that I was fortunate to play in, such as Blue Sunday, Wabi Sabi, and Dogmatics of Indiana; some of it has never been performed. The recordings embedded in this section were made over several years, some on devices as lo-fi as digital voice recorders and some in well-equipped studios with fine producers. I’m no great singer or guitarist, but that’s ok; it’s the music that matters.

As far as the genres go, I grew up listening to music on AM radio in the 1950s and ’60s. When I was a kid, I listened religiously to the local, overpowering AM Top-40 station in Northern Virginia, WEAM and later WPGC, via a single earplug connected to a tiny plastic crystal radio set shaped like a V-2 rocket that I connected to my bedroom curtain rod with an alligator clip. Later, when I was in high school, I listened to the same stations in my mother’s wonderful ’55 Pontiac as I drove my friends to school, ballgames, and dates. Through the ministrations of my best friend, I was exposed to Muddy Waters, Howling Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson, and the culture of Chicago blues. In those days, Top-40 radio had playlists that would have The Stones followed by Roger Miller followed by the Temptations followed by Jimmy Reed followed by Bob Dylan followed by Vince Guaraldi followed by Mel Torme, and so on. It was a time of miraculous fusion, the most inspired exposition of diversity in my time. Later, when Top-40 was succeeded by Underground Radio, the hippie-friendly takeover of the airwaves, all those musical currents were synthesized. In college, I became a jazzhound and opted out of rock, but never losing my allegiance to the blues. Then it was the British New Wave, Afropop, club music, Richard Thompson, ska punk, etc. etc., a not uncommon trajectory. I’ve never aspired to settle into a particular style so I never knew beforehand what sort of music I would be making up.