Bio
As poet William Carlos Williams shows in his epic work
“Paterson” (yes as in New Jersey, and yes he wrote it before Richard
Shindell), the classic exists wherever you are. You don’t have to apologize
for your influences or try to escape your roots. I’m sure I didn’t invent
the genre “suburban contemporary,” but that’s what I do. I cull from my
left-of-center experience, from Long Island to Amherst to Newton, and write
intelligent, well-crafted, memorable songs about The Stuff Of Life --
stress, politics, sex, family, religion, rebellion, regrets, and the
glorious million-petalled flower of being here (ok I stole that line from
Phillip Larkin, but it’s a great line). The songs range from John Prine
sparse to laugh-out-loud funny to cancer serious. People often compliment
me on my songwriting, or come up to me and say “that happened to me, too.”
Writing songs that stick is important to me; I don’t like songs that I
can’t remember, and I try not to write them myself.
My first CD “Shaker Chair” was released in 2000 and
received airplay on Boston’s WUMB Folk Radio and other New England
stations. Since then, I’ve opened for Bill Staines, Vance Gilbert, Jack
Hardy, Catie Curtis, Geoff Muldaur, Geoff Bartley, Steve Gillette and Cindy
Mangsun, and others, and I play regularly at Club Passim in Cambridge. My
second CD “Voices from the Right Brain” reached #52 on the Folk DJ charts,
which, for a singer-songwriter with a professional day job (I’m a
geophysicist) ain’t chicken liver.
