Welcome to my official
music website! For those that may not know me
already... I'm an American guitarist and
songwriter currently residing in Europe and
performing for a selective coffee house
rendezvous type audience. I write my own music
when inspited and make recordings when I have
what it takes to do that. The 1960s British-American
music and the environment I grew up in had a
great influence on my art. It was mainly in the
area that comprised the former Hyde
Park Township of Chicago where many American Blues
and Jazz artists came from, and also President Barak
Obama. I
lived in the area near Calumet
City,
where night clubs featured Las Vegas-style
showgirl revues and artists such as Sun Ra, Frank
Sinatra, Sophie
Tucker, Keith
Speaks or Gypsy
Rose Lee
used to play during the Prohibition. Calumet City was featured
or mentioned in many movies and went by many names
such as The Strip or Sin City, for example. But calumet
means "Peace
Pipe"
in North American Indian language. So some of us
used to call it Peace Pipe City. I believe that
Calumet City's Strip was the prototype for the
Strip in Las
Vegas. The
place was an oasis of freedom in many ways, the
way Amsterdam in the Netherlands is
today. Perhaps that's why I feel so much at home
in the Netherlands.
I moved to Chicago's Gold
Coast near
Rush
Street and
Old
Town in
early 1970s. That influenced my creativity even
more. Chicago is an important music culture
center of the world, and Rush
Street and
Old
Town are
important American entertainment centers. Old
Town was a great American
folk music revival center for an elite group of the bohemian scene in the 1950s and
1960s. It's also where an illegal backhouse
tavern operated on Wells Street through the 1970-80s.
The tavern was called The
Blues Brothers Bar and it was started by John
Belushi
and Dan
Aykroyd,
better known from their 1980 Blues
Brothers
movie... Other artists such as Mike
Myers, the
star of Wayn's
World and Austin
Powers was
a Chicago actor from Old Town's Second
City Theatre. Old Town was not just a
neighborhood but a state of mind. And one can
catch a feel of its spirit as it was in the 1960-70s
in some of Mike Myers' films. [More
about Old Town]
Chicago is home of many
kinds of American Music such as those
represented by the Sunset
Cafe, Blues
Brothers and many core American
typres of music such as Big
Bands, Jazz, Gospel
music, Rhytm
& Blues, Soul
music, Country music (Barn
Dance was later called Grand
Ole Opre when it moved to Nashville), Chicago
Blues, House
Music, Acid
House music, Hip-Hop (called Chi-town),
Pitchfork
Media and many
more...
Like other early Chicago musicians, I
didn't take music lessons but taught
myself, learned from friends or on the
street. In those days, music was played
everywhere, on transistor radios that
were as popular as mp3 players are today,
in shops and on streets. So I developed
my own style and method that's a bit
different from what one would learn in a
school. Basically speaking, what I
learned was to play from the heart or the
soul, and not to pay too much attention
on being technically correct. Perhaps
that's why many Chicago artists have
inspired so many generations of artists
around the world such as The
Beatles or The
Rolling Stones. Besides the local scene, I
was also influenced by such 1960s artists
as Donovan, Jefferson
Airplane, Bob
Dylan, Tommy
Chung and others. |
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