Press Photos

"Never too Late"
TOUR and CD

I've written the story behind this CD and tour in the blog (below - in 3 posts). I hope you can take the time to read it - thanks!

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JOIN ME AT ONE OF thESE cities (on the left).  SEND ME A MESSAGE ON the Contact page and let me know THAT YOU WILL BE THERE.  I STILL HAVE SOME OPEN DATES WHERE I can do house (living room) shows.  For details, just contact me.

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Sample Track

Part one - Introduction 

When I was 6 years old, I remember in first grade, our teacher asked us, “what do you want to be when you grow up?” I just shrugged my shoulders and said “I dunno”.  It seemed like every boy in my class wanted to either be a doctor or a policeman or a fireman.  None of those sounded good to me.  

Then when I was 9, my dad took us to see a movie about the life of Hank Williams, Sr. After I saw that movie, I knew.  I knew that I wanted to be like Hank Williams (minus the binge drinking and premature death, of course).  After that, I still answered “I don’t know” to the question (most of the time), but I knew.  I knew that I wanted to write songs and that I wanted to perform in front of an audience and touch people the way that Hank did.  I also knew (even at that young age) that it was a “dream” and that few people ever realize those types of dreams.  So that is why I still said “I don’t know” (most of the time), but, I did start working on it. 
I tried to write a song.  I didn’t know how to write a song, but I knew that it needed to rhyme so I decided to choose some words that rhyme and go from there.  To the best of my recollection, my first song went something like this…

  • Harry wants to marry Mary 
  • But Mary is in love with Larry 

It was a classic love triangle :)

Within a few minutes, I realized that it wasn’t good, so I crumpled it up and threw it away.  I didn’t throw the dream away – I just knew that I needed to learn how to do what I wanted to do. 

When I was 11, the school that I went to offered a guitar class during the summer session.  I learned three chords that summer and then I bought a book on guitar and learned more.  I would say that it took me four years to become just somewhat proficient on guitar.  So I learned to play guitar and sing and when I was around 15, I wrote some more songs.  They were much better than “The Ballad of Larry, Mary and Harry". 

When I was 19 I got into a band and started playing in local bars, mostly covers. I wrote some more songs.  I played them for friends and family and got positive feedback.  I subscribed to “Songwriter magazine" and submitted songs to publishers,  and I continued to perform in local bars with various bands until I was 21.  Then I got married and to make a long story short, I decided to make music a hobby.  I wanted to be “normal”, so I put the dream away, got a real job and bought a house.  A few years later, I did start playing music in church and that was great on many levels.  I even was able to write songs for church – in a way, I was living the dream, at least in the context of my “church life”.

Part two - and so then... 

As most of you know, “time flies”.  Kids grow up and at some point (if you’re lucky) you find yourselves in house with your spouse and a dog or a cat or both. 

In 2007, my wife started working on a novel.  The thing is that she had always wanted to be a writer but like me, she had put that dream aside in order to raise a family and build our home life.  But here we were, now with more time on our hands so she started writing.  She got caught up in it and by 2011 she had written a four part series – four books – about 1300 pages!  

So then she started looking for a publisher.  I guess maybe that I got inspired (or jealous).  I started to wonder if my dream of writing and performing might still have some life in it.  In 2013, I started checking craigslist to see if anyone was looking for an aging, overweight guitar player for their band.  Oddly enough, I got a gig!  One thing led to another and eventually I got into a band that now plays on a regular basis and along the way I started playing some solo shows too.  And I started writing again!  Oh, and my wife found a publisher!  Her first novel was published in 2015!

Things were moving along – in November of 2015 my wife did a book signing at our Local B. Dalton Bookstore and my band was booked almost every weekend.  At one point Wendy asked me “how far are you going to take this? Are you going to make an album and go on the road?”  I laughed out loud and said “NO WAY”.  I had no intention of doing that because I loved the quiet, “normal” life that we shared together – the weekend gigs were just an escape, weekends were fine, no need for more than that.  

March 11th, 2016 is a day I will never forget.  That is the day that a doctor sat my wife and I down and told us that she had stage 4 pancreatic cancer and that her chances of surviving more than six months was about one percent.  Wow.  She had been having abdominal pain and had been to see the doctor in January, but was mis-diagnosed. We both went into shock.  When we started to breathe again, we made two decisions.  One was to fight and pray and try to beat the odds.  And two was to make every day a good day – to forget the unimportant things and just focus on love and gratitude. 

If you or someone that you love has had a serious disease like this then you know that it tends to consume your life.  We spent hours every week at the infusion center.  Things did get better for a while, but despite the best efforts of the medical professionals and all our prayers, my lovely wife passed away on March 10th, 2017 – one day short of the one year mark.  I can only say that we succeeded in making every day good.  We expressed our love for each other several times a day and I was so glad that I was able to serve her that last year.  She served me for so many years – she always did all the cleaning and cooking and everything.  She was grateful that I was there to take care of her but I was even more grateful that I had the privilege of taking care of her – it was my chance to demonstrate my love for her.

Part three - A new page 

A few months after her passing, I remembered her asking me if was going to record an album and go on the road. I started to think – maybe I should do that.  I needed something to help me get my mind off of losing her.  She had followed her dream of writing a novel and getting it published, maybe I should revisit my dream.

As I was entertaining this fantasy, a little voice whispered in my other ear, “you can’t do that, you’re too old!”  I grabbed my guitar and I quickly wrote a song called “it’s never too late”.  Basically, I just wanted to tell that voice to shut up! During 2016, after the second round of chemo when Wendy was actually feeling a little better – she started doing the edits and re-writes on her second book, to get it ready for publishing!  So yes, I am probably a little bit older than most of the people that are currently recording new music and going out on tour – but I’m still breathing and it’s NEVER TOO LATE.  I reasoned that if my courageous wife was able to work on her dream when she was going through chemotherapy, that I could find the strength to pursue my dream. 

So here I am – I was originally going to just try to record an EP (7 songs) of my recently written material but now it’s going to be 12 songs!  And I’m going on a short tour!  So you know what?  It really is NEVER TOO LATE – here’s to dreams and the magic that dreams bring to our lives!