I'm a bit uncomfortable with the whole "bio" thing; too often what's written is more fantasy than fact, the product of a record company's promo deptartment attempting to glamorize a musician's life to create a cult of personality or legitimize the artist's "street credintals". That's why I decided to go ahead & write my own - so here we go . . .

How far back do we need to go? I was born in South Florida, in the Fall of 1956 , the same year some say marked the birth of Rock n' Roll. My family moved quite a bit when I was young, so I grew up in North Miami, Coral Gables, St. Petersburg, Kendall, and finally Marathon Island in the Florida Keys. Somewhere in there, we lived in Johnson City, Tenn for about a year - but to me, the Florida Keys was my childhood home. If you ask any of my 3 big brothers or my little sister, you'd have a different answer for where they'd call "home".

I left home early and went up I-95 to Miami; I knew I wanted to be a bass-player from the time I saw The Beatles first appearance on the Ed Sullivan show - this was not a popular idea w/ my physician father. I didn't see much future in the music biz in the Keys, so it seemed a good idea to take off at the time. I worked odd jobs and practiced a lot until I got good enough to get work w/ Top 40 bands playing the hotel cirucut in Florida.

The Top 40 stuff got old after a while; sure, it's a good life, playing at night and spending your days messing w/ rich tourist girls who want to piss of their Dad by hanging w/ scummy musicians, but eventually you realize that there's not much room for creativity playin' in a Top 40 band . . . so I headed up I-95 again, ending up in Boston after stops in Atlanta & New York.

Boston was a happening place at the time; Areosmith was hot, Peter Wolf n' Faye Dunway were shacking up, Areosmith had hit it big, The Cars were just breaking, and Boston was one of the epicenters of the Indi/Punk scene. I played bass in quite a few bands at dingy clubs like the Rat and Cantones, with frequent trips to play CBGB's in NYC. Fronted my own band for a while - Death In Shopping Malls - we came in dead last at the WBCN Battle Of The Bands one year. Eventually, I ended up with John Felice & The Lowdowns, remnants of Boston's legendary Real Kids. I played with them on the Nothin' Pretty album, but eventually that whole thing just fell apart in a haze of substance abuse & arguments w/ the record company. I was sick of the whole scene in the Northeast, and since there wasn't much I hadn't seen on I-95, I decided to pick another highway, so it was down to Texas.

This landed me in Austin, after a brief stay in Paris, Texas and gigs with several "New Country" cover bands. Finding work as a bass player in Austin was no big trick - it' was a town full of guitar gunslingers, most of them glad to have a bass player who'll back 'em up playing the blues on 6th st. I spent about 5 years playing 2 and 3 shows a night sometimes, backing up more guys than I can remember - some of them are still payin' dues on 6th st., hammering out Stevie Ray n' Hendrix. During this time, I wrote the songs that eneded up on "Crooked Country", and one winter, I convinced Rick Harte, who I'd worked with on the "Nothin' Pretty" album, to come down and help me make a demo. He liked the songs and signed me to his label, Ace Of Hearts, and thus was born Crooked Country. It was recorded mostly during the day while I was playin' the blues at night.

That whole blues thing got old - to tell the truth, I've never been much of a blues fan, and eventually the folks I was playing with caught on. I lucked out and ended up backing up Doak Short, a great Austin songwriter & NOT a blues band, who had the sweet gig of opening for Miss Toni Price on her Tuesday night "Hippie Hour" at the Continental Club in South Austin. All thru' my years in Austin, I pursued the solo thing, and had several versions of The Jaded Lovers, but we just never really generated the all-important "buzz" in Austin.

Now I'm in Houston, Texas, doing open mics & scattered solo shows while putting together a road band to promote "Crooked Country".