After
spending lots of winters going to Dallas where I lived with my best
friend, Chris Williams, and then onto Austin, my car veered off the
highway between Nashville and Lousisana one year, and I found myself
driving past the awesome late towns of Pass Christian and Biloxi,
MS. Work was scarce unless you wanted to deal cards,
but when I met "Crazy Mary", life started to bubble. Mary was a professional caterer and while
we were catering a party at an old mansion on the beach, a
photographer handed me a biz card and asked me
if he could take photos. I asked to see a portfolio and we had a short conversation about me
trading modeling for some CD photos, so on it went.
Billy Dugger owned "Shades of Gray" photography studio in Biloxi and also donated time to the local theater there.
The following week we spent a couple of hours scouring old buildings downtown Gulfport.
The second story of the J C Penny building was the perfect landscape for black and white.
6000+ sq. ft. of wood floors, rounded brick arches leading to more
empty storage rooms. A wooden freight elevator that bore the marks of a ghostly hand prints from moving guys. Billy brought his Hasselblad and we started shooting as I played music.
Billy called a week later and said the photos turned out great, OH and by the way: friends at Center Stage in Biloxi were in a pinch
for a performer due to a cancellation and could I play a concert four days later. I am still
extremely shy about performing, but he convinced me it would be ok. He rushed some of the photos down to the local paper...and on it
went. This would be my first performance in 5 years and later, the photos would
become the cover and back of Deo
Volente.
After years of
writing songs, singing various festivals, theaters and
coffeehouses, the
response of that Biloxi concert was overwhelming and I came home to record Deo Volente in Traverse City.


2006 Meanwhile,
deep in the swamps of
northern Florida, a bubbling spring of soulful musicians keeps churning
out tunes as the art of pure jamming continues. These folks got my
fingers working on, and on. Crow Moon is my next solo project
in the hopper.
Back to Stonemice
2010: Just finished writing the Copper Dog 150 Song " Midnight on the Rails" last night, a light
bluegrass song that makes one want to jump a train even though its about mushing. I started to invision dog mushers out crossing the Keweewnaw peninsula at midnight last night and out it popped.
Songsmithing is like plucking jewels out of thin air. You never know where they come from or why.