My first music memories should probably be from church but instead they are of singing along to Hank Williams' songs that I memorized the words to. I was enthralled with radio and jukeboxes, with the power of music and even more, the power of words. Three minutes and the great songwriters gave you one hell of a journey.
Later, when I was a bit older I used to go to Ulven's Drugstore in my home town and read Hit Parade, a magazine that printed the lyrics to the top twenty songs. When I had the money I'd buy the magazine and memorize the lyrics to the current hits. Each week I'd listen to Casey Kasem's Top 40 countdown. To this day it amazes me how the words to those old songs will come to me when I hear one of them.
No surprise then that music would become a major force in my life. Around the age of ten I started writing lyrics, epics that maybe Bob Dylan could have appreciated for their length if not their substance. I started playing guitar at fifteen, very bad guitar I might add. But there was no turning back. My love of words found other outlets as well—I came to enjoy writing just about anything and won some awards for poetry and speeches.
I've never been far from music or writing. In 1983 I went to L.A., where I took guitar lessons, studied songwriting and formed a few rock bands. Later, I studied music formally at Los Angeles Pierce College, where I composed choral, small ensemble and even an orchestral work, and saw many of them performed. In 1991 I was burned out on the L.A. rock scene — a scene I had never really fit into. Driving down the 405 one day I heard Gary Moore's Still Got the Blues. It made me think back to watching blues bands at the Cabooze in Minneapolis, or at the Mississippi Queen in La Crosse. So I put out ads and The RedHot Blues were born.
Fast forward fifteen years...The RedHot Blues turned out to be the best musical time of my life — recording, tours, festivals, clubs — fulfilling a million dreams. But one part of my musical dream went unfulfilled. I am, more than anything else, a songwriter. As The RedHot Blues faded, I polished some existing songs and wrote many more new ones. That evolved into some jam sessions and eventually, the desire to do a recording. That brings us to now, to Long Way Home, a title with many meanings for me. I'm genuinely excited about the songs on Long Way Home and can't wait to see it finished.
In the meantime I returned to college and will get a degree in English - Creative Writing sometime next year. I've recently finished my second novel to go along with a stack of short stories and a larger stack of academic essays and research papers. In much the same way that Long Way Home represents a full circle musically, I feel a great sense of resolution at writing once again. In songs and fiction the writer gets to create a new reality, any reality. For me there is nothing like that freedom and power, and I think that is what excited me about words when I was a punk kid.