It never seemed like my parents had very good music when I was a kid. They had a lot, just not much that I was really drawn to. I found a handful of their 45’s and even fewer LP’s that I really liked. One record that stands out in my memory, though, was Elton John’s Greatest Hits.
I would play that record and picture Elton’s brother “Daniel” flying away in an airplane bound for Spain. I would try to figure out what “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” had to do with the Wizard of Oz. And I would imagine the bars where Elton and his friends would go to fight on Saturday nights, since they were alright for fighting.
In hindsight, I think I really appreciated the stories and emotion in those songs. And somehow, this British dude with huge glasses managed to connect with a little kid from Indiana.
That’s the magic of songwriting that I really love. I love the way you can put the notes and words together and it can have its own meaning apart from you.
Sometimes I imagine all these little s.o.s.’s can have a positive effect on someone else. You get all honest and transparent. You cry for help in a song. You write words that beg for someone to come and save you. And then, if everything goes right, in the end, the song ends up saving someone else.
I’m an independent singer and songwriter based in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Originally from Anderson, Indiana, there wasn’t much music in my family unless you count my grandfather’s harmonica he kept in the dresser drawer next to his Las Vegas playing cards.
I don’t know if it was an electronic toy called Fabulous Fred or something else, but somewhere along the line, I got fascinated enough with the idea of making music to ask my parents to let me take piano lessons in eighth grade. I studied classical piano through high school and college and really started to become a student of pop music, jazz music and songwriting in college at Anderson University in Anderson, Indiana. I’ve always tried to surrounded myself with people who were an ongoing source of musical inspiration and competition.
Growing up in the eighties, I have fond memories from childhood of creating EP mixes of favorite songs from vinyl to tape using the pause/record button on my tape deck. Electronic and audio curiosities have followed me all along the way since then. Okay is my first serious, full-length, musical recording, but I have years of embarrassing tape archives and audio experiments that have led to today.
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