I picked up and got hooked on my brother’s guitar when I was 7 years old. As that was so long ago, I have soaked up a whole lot of songs since then. My musical tastes run narrow, maybe, but they do run deep. It was Marty Robbins and Patsy Cline as a kid (and, as everyone knows, the songs our parents listen to make it into our DNA). In my teens and twenties, I absorbed everything ever put out by the Johns Prine and Denver and later by Nanci Griffith and Steve Earle. All the while and to this day, I still wait for new releases from Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin and Lucinda Williams. Now, I'm not saying I'm in the ranks of those folks, but that's not the point. If all you play and crave are songs that were good enough for them (from their own pens and from those of Townes Van Zandt, Steve Earle, Rodney Crowell, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, that Nobel Prize-winning guy…), then you get to know--up close and personal--what a great song feels like. From the inside, looking out. By staying huddled around those fires, maybe a few sparks landed in my hair or on my clothes, I don't know. But by the time I hit the half-century mark, lingering embers must have caught some updraft, and I learned to pay attention, to kindle them and let them flare up. Lucky, lucky me. In late 2015, I said "Well, contrary to my expectations, it appears I am not getting any younger; who knows how long these dulcet tones will last?" And I set out to shine up a few of my growing catalog of originals, just to see what fun I might have and, mostly, to see what kind of heat these little fires have in them. What started as a six-song demo in the spring of 2016 grew before the end of the year into an eleven--track project, of which I could not be more glad. Come see; I think we got us a nice little bonfire going, and I do hope you'll enjoy a listen or two.