Music

Welcome to the music page!
Painting and music have always gone hand in hand for me, and I have pursued both for nearly my entire life. I have chosen to make my living primarily from painting, but continue my exploration of roots music as a parallel. On guitar, it has always been early Country blues and Ragtime fingerstyle guitar; on banjo, I have focused on the early Southern Clawhammer styles, particuarly West Virginia and Roundpeak style Banjo, and on Ukulele, I seem to be stuck playing a lot of the Tin Pan Alley music and tunes I heard growing up. I'll soon be trying to finish up a new solo record incorporating all of these sounds. I also plan to start posting MP3 clips of some of the new recordings very soon on this page so you can keep in touch with what I am doing in this area.

I have played solo shows all over the Northeast and the South, into Colorado and even did some playing in Italy. Over the years I have opened shows or shared the stage with such notable musicians as Taj Mahal, Dave Van Ronk, David Bromberg, John Hammond, Elizabeth Cotten, Pat Donahue, Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry, Jimmie Dawkins, Dan Hicks, J Geils band, Nickolette Larson, my good friends Paul Geremia, Paul Rishell and John Mooney among many others. I got to record 3 CD's with the band Roll and Tumble with which I played with for nearly nine years.The last one we did, called Rattle that thing" also features John Mooney on some cuts.

I have dabbled with building my own instruments since the early 80's and have built a number of my own guitars and banjos. In recent years I have been building a few more under the watchful eye of Julius Borges, who as the owner of Borges Guitars in Little Ma. probably builds some of the finest instruments on the planet.I completed buiding my 11th guitar (a Rosewood 000 cutaway style 12 fret) and will be playing that in my upcoming shows. I am putting the finishing touches on two others, a Mahogany"Gibson Style" J35 and a Brazilian Rosewood"Gibson Style" 185. I also have an Artist relationship with National Resophonic Guitars in San Luis Obispo which are still my favorite instruments of all to play, and I work hard to promote their guitars on all of my shows.They have built me several exquisite instruments, including a new "Custom Style O Ukulele" which is incredible to say the least.

As busy as things have been lately, I still hope to play some solo performances around the New England area this summer and also look forward to playing with some local muscians this summerr. I still hope to finish the recording of my new Solo record as time allows.