Q: When did you first start
playing the guitar?
A: At age six.
Q: What made you pick up a
guitar?
A: The sound – most of the music I listened to
featured guitars, country, rock, and bluegrass.
Q: Did you begin with lessons?
A: Yes. His name was “old Joe” and he gave
lessons in the neighborhood. I took lessons from him for three
or four months. Then I took off on my own. I didn’t take
lessons again until my early teens.
Q: Were you writing at that time
or just playing?
A: I was learning.
Q: When did you begin writing
music?
A: I was in my early teens when I began
composing – mostly rock, at that point.
Q: You don’t write rock music
now. When did you change?
A: I began writing instrumental fingerstyle
music in my late teens.
Q: What prompted you to do that?
A: The first time I heard Manuel Barrueco my
interest in classical music was sparked. I was around 14 years
old.
Q: Who were your other
influences?
A: Later, I heard the music of Alex di Grassi.
At that moment, I knew I was going to pursue solo guitar
playing.
Q: Any other influences?
A: Johann Sebastian Bach. An album I purchased
of Barrueco playing Bach was a big influence.
Q: Aren’t you considering doing
an album of Bach’s music?
A: Yes, an all–Bach album.
Q: When will you record this?
A: Probably in 2008. I’m working on it now.
Q: What guitars do you use?
A: For the last five years, I’ve been playing
Doolin guitars. I recently purchased a Breedlove, the C-25
Master Class model. I’m also having Breedlove custom make a
Vincent Hammond model.
Q: What will you be doing in
2007?
A: I will be
performing more than I ever have, mainly local venues.
Hopefully, I will be in the studio by Spring recording my second
album, Inspiration. Also in the spring, I’ll be working
on my first DVD project,
Foggy Mountain
Rain.
Q: Where will you be shooting
the DVD?
A: I’ll shoot the DVD in Berkeley Springs, West
Virginia, at Sleepy Creek Mountain. This was an inspiration for
one of the pieces I wrote for my first album. I also will be
shooting on Skyline Drive, then Petersburg, West Virginia, and
then Seneca Rock. I’ll complete the shooting in Blackwater
Falls.
Q: Do you also teach?
A: I teach Monday through Thursday at my private
studio in Mt. Penn, Pennsylvania. I teach all styles of guitar,
from heavy rock to classical.
Q: What were your inspirations
for your pieces?
A: All my music is inspired by nature. My first
album, Where the Mountains Touch the Sky, was inspired by
numerous trips up and down Skyline Drive and through the
Appalachian Mountain Trail.
Q: Is your second album inspired
by nature, too?
A: All the
pieces on my second album, Inspiration, come from my
desire to perform fingerstyle. For examples, the album will
include Greensleeves,
Scarborough Fair,
and by Bach, Minuet in G, Jesu, Joy in Man’s Desire,
and Little Prelude in D Minor. Inspiration
also will feature pieces composed by friends, John Taylor (I
Love You) and John Christiaan (Violet).
Q: I’ve heard you perform the
pieces from your first album. Could you talk a bit about them?
A: Where the Mountains Touch the Sky, the
title track and one of the first pieces I wrote, was inspired by
one of my first trips to Skyline Drive. Foggy Mountain Rain
was composed one evening while I was sitting on my father’s
porch watching the rain. I began to write Julie when I
was on the banks of Lost River, thinking of a lost love.
April’s Tears came from another journey to Skyline Drive.
It was April during a bad drought. This may be the saddest
piece on the album and I was trying to express the sadness of
the landscape, so brown, so dry. Before the Dawn was
composed at Seneca Rock in Petersburg, West Virginia. I got up
before dawn and hiked to the top of the mountain. As the sun
began to rise, I started to compose the piece. Bluebird
was inspired by a blue jay I watched building her nest in a tree
outside my house in West Virginia. Emerald Isles was
inspired by still another trip to Skyline Drive. This time, the
area was very green and it reminded me of Ireland. I composed
it from a cabin I had rented on Skyline Drive, amid all the lush
greenery that spring. Lost Horizon was written when I
was staying in a cabin at Blackwater Falls, West Virginia. I
was watching the sun set and the music just came to me.
Sleepy Creek is named after Sleepy Creek Mountain right
outside Berkeley Springs, West Virginia. I used to go there –
it was a secluded area with no people. I used to drive there to
work on my compositions and rehearse. One evening, Sleepy
Creek just came to me.
Q: What are your plans for, say,
the next few years?
A: My plans are to complete my Bach CD, compose
new pieces – some of which I’ve already started -- and continue
teaching and performing. I’m also planning to release several
new CDs – my own compositions and at least two devoted to Bach.
I’m also working on a DVD, titled Foggy Mountain Rain.
This will be a documentary – I’ll perform all the pieces on my
first CD, Where the Mountains Touch the Sky – at the
locations that inspired them.
