Bio

Some people know what they want to do early in their lives; maybe in High School or College. Most of us fall into careers and discover we like them a lot or a little or hate them a lot or a little. Then there are those of us who figure it out towards the end. This leaves these late bloomers trying to cram a lot of living into a relatively short stretch of time.

I thought I knew what I wanted to be when I dropped out of college and joined a rock and roll band. And it was great and went a long way towards fulfilling the need for a meaningful life, but not completely. Around my fiftieth birthday several things happened that finally caused the light bulb to go on over my head.

First, I read Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. It opened my eyes to one of the main things that was bothering me, the ceaseless erosion of the quality of life in the modern world. Second, Pete Weiss, a musician and recording engineer on the east coast, cold called me and asked if I had any material I wanted to record. I ultimately said no, but my wife suggested I might like to write some tunes along the themes from Ishmael and I liked the idea. Pete was receptive, too. When I made demo tapes for Pete to hear, I was forced to really polish the tunes where earlier in life I had just rushed through the process. One of the tunes took a year and a half to finish and was rewritten three or four times from scratch.

Third, my youngest son asked to learn the violin. He was four and we smiled and said, sure, sure, but he persisted and eventually I found myself sitting in on lessons every week. It occurred to me that when, in the fourth grade, I had passed on learning the violin, because it entailed a rental, in favor of the baritone horn, which was available and free, I might have done myself a disservice. So I bought a fiddle and started playing it. In the process of trying to get the fiddle to sound better (which probably had more to do with the fiddler) I started taking instruments apart to figure out how they worked and how to make them better. Somewhere in there I started building instruments. Over a decade later, I'm still at it. Along the way, some very kind people have put up with my questions and pointed out my mistakes as gently as they could, for which I am very grateful. Now I find myself at 60+ years finally knowing what I want to be when I grow up. And I get to be it, too.