I was born the fourth of nine children in White Plains, New York to a French Canadian/Irish mother from Lewiston, Maine, and a first generation Irish father from Chattanooga, Tennessee. My father relocated this very large family to Nashville when I was 16. I couldn't know this at the time, but this event became one of the most serendipitous things that ever happened to me.
At age 19 an urge to break out of the pack combined with a search for adventure led me to travel West, where my oldest brother was then living in Oregon, and where I lived for the next six months. I was reading, living, and breathing Jack Kerouac. Eventually my restlessness again led me to search for something more. I answered a "Pianist Wanted" notice someone had tacked to a bulletin board in a music store in Portland in 1973 and wound up playing piano with a trio in a club in Grants Pass, Oregon for the next eight months, launching a now 36 year music career.
After moving back to Nashville in 1974 I studied classical piano with Carol Stone and W.O. Smith at Tennessee State University; played gigs with Roy Orbison and Jimmy Webb; wrote songs for Waylon Jennings, Jessi Colter, The Amazing Rhythm Aces and others, and spent 30 years making a living in Nashville recording studios.
I've toured Europe with my partner, songwriter Gretchen Peters, at least sixteen times (I'm starting to lose track) since 2001, and I continue to record and tour both internationally and domestically with her. I also tour with Alex Chilton and the Box Tops when I am not engaged in studio work. My passion has been and will always be music- the learning and creating of it. I have a lot more curiosity than greed in my soul, and I hope that it remains so.
"The Crossing" is my first solo CD. At least three of the tracks are directly related to my recent tours in the UK. My goal was to create an instrumental piece of work that would hopefully break new ground artistically, drawing on the musical influences gained from a lifetime of playing and performing music. Most of the tracks are solo piano, but there is a cellist (David Henry) on 3 tracks, and an acoustic guitarist (Mark Selby) on 1 track. Also in the mix on 3 tracks are some sampled original piano notes, manipulated by the aforementioned David Henry, who also mixed the project at his True Tone Studio in Nashville. You can now hear selected tracks from "The Crossing" on the web at www.solopianoradio.com