As a teenager in the 1960s, my first musical collaborations were in garage bands.  Thanks largely to the long suffering parents of my friends, these early experiences allowed us to try our hand, with uneven success, at most anything that we were hearing on AM radio.  I was pretty consumed with playing rock in the years that followed, and this interest stayed with me until my late teens.  But I eventually decided to put music aside and focus on my studies, which were initially English Literature and, still later, law.   After I finished law school, I had a bit of an epiphany in the parking lot of a Florida record store.  I had just purchased a tape of Doc Watson at a shop called “Peaches” and I remember hurriedly breaking out the cassette and putting it into the player.  I was no stranger to great guitar players by then, but I’ll never forget the effect that “Deep River Blues” had on me that day.  Doc’s music led me to pick up the guitar again and start to explore the bluegrass and traditional guitar styles of Tony Rice, Clarence White, and Norman Blake.  

Over time, I had the chance to play with some wonderful musicians who were working in the Central Florida area.  I played at theme parks, nightclubs, conventions, festivals, weddings–you name it.  Equally important, however, were the recordings that my friends were sharing with me.  Much of this material was what we now loosely refer to as Americana music, and it continues to influence me some twenty years later.  

In 2002, I took a sabbatical from law practice to do an extended musical contract at Tokyo Disney Sea.  The material that I played there led me, somewhat indirectly, to some of the great sounds that were coming out of the British Isles via groups such as Solas and Cherish the Ladies, and from performers like Phil Cunningham, Ally Bain, and John McCusker.  What these musicians had in common with the bluegrass players that I had admired (apart from a connected musical heritage) was a focus on technical precision, tone, rhythmic solidity, and sparkling vocals.  I also began to notice a consistent thematic thread of loss throughout both genres.

Several events led me to focus more exclusively on songwriting.  The first was a move to Scotland that my wife and I made in 2013.  The other was the unexpected death of my childhood best friend.  “The Riven World” emerged from this background, and you can read more about the story behind it and how it came to be recorded here.