Artist Story
About Missing Link Us
I'm told my Grandmother on my mother's side was a piano player. My Granddad born in 1888, Knoxville TN. The family spans from the Ozark/Dallas area. So my own mother had her go at wonderful piano playing, where I would watch her playing, starting about maybe 1966 or so when I was three years old.
She used to have composer bust's, that were about the size of a salt shaker on the piano. I remember Beethoven & Bach busts. I asked her; even way back then somehow; if she wrote her own material. So she used perform a song she called "The Train Song" that was her own composition. I learned about what piano run's were, & a few other things about pianos.
She would play the piano so hard stemming from her personal struggles that she'd break the piano strings inside, thus I named my BMI publishing company, Muted Keys MusicBMI.
I used to have chorus in school, like everyone else & in the 4th grade I was given a harmonica as a gift & learned the songs in the songbook like Alphabet Song, similarly called, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. A valuable songwriting lesson, as to defining what songwriting is, I realized years later. I was intrigued how both songs of different words consisted of the exact same melody! I performed harmonica in front of the class in the 5th grade for show & tell. I, to this day never learned how to play chords on a harmonica. I played notes, & wondered why no one ever mentioned this chord thing to me?
Many tunes I write currently still revolve around major scales, not so much blues scales which are very contemporary and popular.
Also that same year a classmate & I mustered up a rendition of The Bologna Song by Oscar Meyer, which we performed in front of the class. In those years I hit notes, & performing was a stoking experience because we executed the song, very, well. I mention this because, my adult "career" consists mostly of first take performances that are never polished or acceptable; to most musically perfected, & trained, listening ears.
Earlier on I had a Rickenbacher copy, labeled Ryder. It was a red, Ryder guitar. I eventually learned songs on that guitar. I would always pluck the strings; but never knowing, really; how to formulate real chords or structure. I obviously was NOT a prodigy & learning was a very slow process for me, measured more so from Christmas to Christmas. Rather than month to month, or even, week to week. So I like everyone else in my age group, started on Deep Purple's, Smoke On The Water. I also learned how to pluck out Aerosmith's, Dream On, upon the two high sounding strings.
My dad took me took to a guitar store in 1976. Now, Be-Bop Records, Reseda. I was in the eight grade, where I got my first cat gut guitar. As they are sometimes called. I started writing metered verse in that same year, although no one knew this. I learned how to compose, using that cat gut guitar. I was soon transposing that stuff, back to the Rickenbacher electric guitar.
Playing the guitar was so intimidating though, that I favored writing verse instead. So I had a lot of metered verse from the 8th grade, on. I, later, put a lot of that verse to music. Songs that exist to this day. I had original songs in the tenth grade, if not sooner. In the 11th grade I became a roadie for the Robbie Rist Group. I had also been attending concerts for a while then, saw the Beach Boys now famed 77' New Years show. Being w Robbie Rist gave me an exciting inside look, on the stuff, & magic, happening then. Yes, magic is a good & applicable word to describe the whole thing. The live shows were incredible. They were so, incredible, that I was, so intimidated, that I wouldn't show my music or metered verse to anyone, or especially some of the professional acts that Robbie Rist opened up for then. I finally did share those poems & verse, & vainly told someone from the neighborhood as we were all determining possible careers for ourselves that, I was going to be a pro-musician. This may have seemed an unlikely aspiration.
The year immediately after I graduated high school, my mother obtained ovarian cancer. So for those two years after that things were delayed. She lived with ovarian cancer for two years when we got to share a lot & reminisce, & then died. I was glad I had those two years. By then though it was 1985. So I then was able to go back to the frame of mind I had intended toward; before, this unanticipated occurrence; in one's life.
I wrote the words to a song called Christmas In Hawaii in Moorpark, CA in 1982. In 1985, put music to it. The result was for the first time, objectively to my ear, that this music demands to be heard by someone else other than friends or neighbors.
The track was later recorded by & produced by Columbia Records artist Walter Egan.
She used to have composer bust's, that were about the size of a salt shaker on the piano. I remember Beethoven & Bach busts. I asked her; even way back then somehow; if she wrote her own material. So she used perform a song she called "The Train Song" that was her own composition. I learned about what piano run's were, & a few other things about pianos.
She would play the piano so hard stemming from her personal struggles that she'd break the piano strings inside, thus I named my BMI publishing company, Muted Keys MusicBMI.
I used to have chorus in school, like everyone else & in the 4th grade I was given a harmonica as a gift & learned the songs in the songbook like Alphabet Song, similarly called, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. A valuable songwriting lesson, as to defining what songwriting is, I realized years later. I was intrigued how both songs of different words consisted of the exact same melody! I performed harmonica in front of the class in the 5th grade for show & tell. I, to this day never learned how to play chords on a harmonica. I played notes, & wondered why no one ever mentioned this chord thing to me?
Many tunes I write currently still revolve around major scales, not so much blues scales which are very contemporary and popular.
Also that same year a classmate & I mustered up a rendition of The Bologna Song by Oscar Meyer, which we performed in front of the class. In those years I hit notes, & performing was a stoking experience because we executed the song, very, well. I mention this because, my adult "career" consists mostly of first take performances that are never polished or acceptable; to most musically perfected, & trained, listening ears.
Earlier on I had a Rickenbacher copy, labeled Ryder. It was a red, Ryder guitar. I eventually learned songs on that guitar. I would always pluck the strings; but never knowing, really; how to formulate real chords or structure. I obviously was NOT a prodigy & learning was a very slow process for me, measured more so from Christmas to Christmas. Rather than month to month, or even, week to week. So I like everyone else in my age group, started on Deep Purple's, Smoke On The Water. I also learned how to pluck out Aerosmith's, Dream On, upon the two high sounding strings.
My dad took me took to a guitar store in 1976. Now, Be-Bop Records, Reseda. I was in the eight grade, where I got my first cat gut guitar. As they are sometimes called. I started writing metered verse in that same year, although no one knew this. I learned how to compose, using that cat gut guitar. I was soon transposing that stuff, back to the Rickenbacher electric guitar.
Playing the guitar was so intimidating though, that I favored writing verse instead. So I had a lot of metered verse from the 8th grade, on. I, later, put a lot of that verse to music. Songs that exist to this day. I had original songs in the tenth grade, if not sooner. In the 11th grade I became a roadie for the Robbie Rist Group. I had also been attending concerts for a while then, saw the Beach Boys now famed 77' New Years show. Being w Robbie Rist gave me an exciting inside look, on the stuff, & magic, happening then. Yes, magic is a good & applicable word to describe the whole thing. The live shows were incredible. They were so, incredible, that I was, so intimidated, that I wouldn't show my music or metered verse to anyone, or especially some of the professional acts that Robbie Rist opened up for then. I finally did share those poems & verse, & vainly told someone from the neighborhood as we were all determining possible careers for ourselves that, I was going to be a pro-musician. This may have seemed an unlikely aspiration.
The year immediately after I graduated high school, my mother obtained ovarian cancer. So for those two years after that things were delayed. She lived with ovarian cancer for two years when we got to share a lot & reminisce, & then died. I was glad I had those two years. By then though it was 1985. So I then was able to go back to the frame of mind I had intended toward; before, this unanticipated occurrence; in one's life.
I wrote the words to a song called Christmas In Hawaii in Moorpark, CA in 1982. In 1985, put music to it. The result was for the first time, objectively to my ear, that this music demands to be heard by someone else other than friends or neighbors.
The track was later recorded by & produced by Columbia Records artist Walter Egan.