BIO

I’m from Elizabeth City, North Carolina (and it’s taken me many years to say this) and I’m proud of it. I’ve been surrounded by music for most of my life; from my mother, who’s always played piano and organ in churches and who has been choir director and singer, from the country music my Dad listened to when I was little, and from the Top 40 radio stations I grew up with.

There are always a few moments in life that come to define who you are. My first “epiphany” came after I joined the band (playing trombone) in the seventh grade and heard and played excerpts from Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” when I was 15. After that my fate was sealed. All I ever wanted to do was be a songwriter.

That second moment was when I saw a local amateur production of “Annie get your gun” and I got the musical bug.

The third moment was when I was at a party in 1977 and heard “Aja” by Steeley Dan for the first time.

I owe a lot of gratitude to a lot of people for influencing my musical life; Jeanne Milbrath, my first piano teacher (I didn’t start until I was 16) who let me go off on my tangents and explore and write when I should have been practicing Bach; my mother and father for always supporting me and taking me to concerts by Peter Nero and listening to me struggle to play the trombone and piano; my friend, David Albert (drummer extraordinaire, who introduced me to jazz and big band music); Scott Callaway, my band director, who exposed me to some of the greatest music in the world; my jazz piano teacher, Bill O’ Connell, who when I told him at our first lesson that I really didn’t have any technique told me- “I’ve found that your technique does what you need it to do”. Great advice.

My friend and co-writer, Andreas Aleman, always tells me, “it’s the journey”. It’s a big joke to both of us. But actually he’s right. My journey has taken me from Elizabeth City to Boston to New York City to Stockholm; from working in the fields for Mr. Jimmy Winslow and at Pizza Inn and a shoe store to working at Ohrbach’s and Macy’s department stores and finally working as a trader at COMEX. During that time I’ve always kept writing and pursuing the music; got my first song cut when I was 34 years old. Also, when I was 34 my Swedish wife and I moved to Sweden so she could give birth to our twin boys (Adam & Jeremy). Since then I’ve worked with some fantastic writers here in Sweden and back in the US. I’ve been lucky enough to work with some really talented people and get songs cut in Sweden, Norway, Finland, Japan, Australia, the UK, Germany, Spain, Belgium, China, the Philippines and even Iceland.

If you haven’t of me before it’s probably because I mainly do what I want to do as far as music is concerned. I’m not a slave to the trend and that’s a conscious choice on my part. I believe in quality music that says something and touches people. That doesn’t mean that I’m a musical snob… I enjoy most genres of music if it’s done well.

I write music and lyrics, I’ve produced albums, I’ve written music for commercials and background music for relaxation CDs. I’ve done translations, I’ve been a teacher, an independent record label owner, a booking agent and just about anything else you can imagine. Through it all, I always come back to the music. Some things you do because you have to and some things you do because you love it. I love music.

My goal with this site is to get my music out there to other people, to share my ideas about writing and creativity, and, from a purely egotistical perspective, to see how many people care to listen to what I have to say.

Right now if I had to sum up my life so far I’d use the last lines of a song I just wrote for my musical, The Independent Man- “I never let my dreams surrender, I took this life and lived”.

Hope you enjoy my words and music. If you’d like to know a little more about my writing credits and the business side of things you can find all that out at: www.eidolon.se

Please let me know what you think about the site and the things I have to say.

All the best,