A BIT 'O BIO (Well, OK a LOTT-O BIO!)
I think my life has consisted of really about 3 lives. No, not in the Bhuddist sense - can't really tell if I've been reincarnated as a banjo picker or not. If I have been I must have really screwed up in a past incarnation! No, I think what I mean is that I've really been 3 closely related but different people. (I know what you're thinking - schizo! Barking mad!) Well maybe, but the transformations have been gradual, and each person spans decades. I'm still trying to figure out how to label them and how to demarcate the transitions. I guess I'd call the first life/person the Formative one, which I think more or less goes from being born in Columbus, Ohio USA in the early 50s, up through a music degree at the Indiana University School of Music, followed by a year of grad school in foreign languages at Purdue, where I met my first spouse.
The second person/life I guess I might call Exploratory, or perhaps Trial-and-Error. Jobs being scarce for symphonic trumpet players, and my natural talent being stringed instruments (somehow my parents, as we parents too often do, missed the very very obvious!), I sort of drifted thru this and that trying to figure out how to do something with music. It was in the mid-70s that I hooked up as a bass player for a sort of Newgrass Revival style Bluegrass band (visit www.kokomobros.com sometime!) When that broke up (I was the only one who really was trying to pursue music), I drifted in and out of a lot of groups (some full-time, some not) and various day jobs along with or in between. I sort of became a jack of many instruments, master of none. I'd play whatever I could get work playing - guitar, bass (lots of that and I still love it), piano, banjo, harmonicas - but absolutely no trumpet. It was pretty tough going, I didn't really have a clue how to do what I wanted to do. Spent a lot of time on the road which didn't help my marriage. Finally got to the point in my mid-30s that I didn't want to do music any more. I went back to school, got a degree in computer programming and technology, during which my first marriage broke up.
My graduation with honors in December of 1990 was probably the beginning of ME Version 3.0. (I think I'm on about version 3.4 now.) It was pretty rough going just then. Economy was in recession and I spent six months trying to get a job in 5 states (I was living in Indiana). Finally I was pretty much on the skids when my Auntie in Seattle heard of my plight, called me up and told me to get my resume and my butt out there because the place was booming, and she'd spring for the ticket. I went, and understood that it would be just a matter of weeks before I'd have work if I went out there. But I was saddled with a small box of a house, and houses weren't selling (in fact mine depreciated despite all the sweat equity I'd invested!) But wonder of wonders, I met somebody just hours after I got back who knew someone who wanted houses in my area for rentals. In less than 2 weeks I was on my way to Seattle with $2500, a 286 PC, a guitar, a beater banjo (The Mutt), a 15 year old Mercedes Benz (which I the Lord musta bought me), and some clothes. That was all I had left. Now here's where it gets interesting.
To make a long story short, it was less than 3 weeks after arriving in Seattle that this insane flotilla of Russian ships hit port that were trying to retrace the voyage of Vitus Bering 250 years later. It was a typical Soviet undertaking, and the last gasp because while they were there the USSR collapsed. Now on one of those boats was my crazy landlord, a longshoreman from Kodiak Alaska who'd wrangled the boats free moorage in Kodiak, and who'd been invited to ride down on a vodka-powered cruise to Seattle. Also on that boat was a certain Russian political journalist from St. Petersburg. Whom I, ahem, noticed. As it turned out, I had a job starting in a couple of weeks and a car. She was one of the few who spoke good English, and so led shopping and other expeditions which I chauffeured. She was a divorcee, and one thing led to another – you know how it goes. We eventually decided she and her 2 daughters would come to the States. Uncle Sam was, ah, less than supportive shall we say? But somehow we managed. My career started to move a bit, and led us on a merry chase to Silicon Valley, and back to the Midwest and finally to St. Petersburg, where we thought we'd just spend a year to help keep the kids from losing their Russian. I found interesting work helping non-English speaking software companies communicate with their English-speaking markets.
More than 11 years later, we're still here. One kid has finished her Masters the University of Strasbourg, France, and is now doing an internship in Paris (woo!) The other kiddo is in the International Relations faculty at the university here. My wife is Chief Editor of a network of community newspapers that's independent from any government money and still writes what it thinks (we'll see for how long I guess).
These days I pretty much just play for our two cats and fart around with my bare bones home recording studio. Occasionally Aileen at the City Bar coerces me (with nachos) into playing an evening at the City Bar, and Doug bribes me (with steak and Samuel Adams) to play a Sunday evening at The Other Side. Which I must say I do enjoy, even if I'm not worth crap for work on Monday morning!