I have been making up songs since I was about 12 years old, when I would run through the woods behind my house singing show tunes and yodeling. Drawing upon the rich tones of my childhood, that music would well up from inside me as though Judy Garland and Patsy Cline had struck up a musical chord with Nat King Cole and Cole Porter, while Johnny Cash strummed his train-ride beat in the background. That's how my life-long songwriting habit was born: running through bean fields and hayfields, pretending to be a composite of my musical heroes.

Those childhood songs were also inspired by my father, who would play cowboy music with his guitar and harmonica, and now, almost 40 years later, I have returned to my musical roots writing cowboy swing and ballads that sound more like they were found in an archival file than derived by a modern songwriter.

Although I continue to write across many genres within the folk/roots scene, it is my ongoing romance with early western swing and South-of the Border tunes that gives me the biggest thrill as a writer. That's why I'm having so much fun with my latest back-up trio THE GYPSY COWBOYS!

Songwriting is basically storytelling (at least it should be), and I love telling a good story that will touch the heart and soul. My greatest compliment is when I have brought tears to an audience or managed to tickle them with political satire. Lately, I've been into inspiring romance with my little cowboy love songs that just make you want to dance close with someone you adore. I like to dance lightly across the endless spectrum of those human emotions. It’s probably the reason I write so many retro songs in so many different styles.