About John's Music

I am from Clarke County Virginia. The picture to the right is me warming up to go and play Watermelon Park Bluegrass Festival as a "Tweener" act. One of my all time favorite gigs. That river in the photo is the Shenandoah River, and the house where I grew up sits just about a mile from the river. My childhood was spent mostly outside in rural Virginia, playing in the woods, riding horses, hunting, fishing, camping, and learning how to appreciate all that VA and WVA have to offer. I consider my self extremely lucky to have grown up in such an amazing part of the world. 

The house I grew up in was purchased by my grandfather in 1919, and it had an upright piano in it. I remember spending hours just "pretending"to play that piano. Those are some of my earliest memories of music. 

I went to the College of Charleston, Charleston SC where I studied Music Performance and Psychology. I auditioned into the CofC Jazz Program as a Jazz Bassist. That is/was my primary instrument. Needless to say, by my senior year, 8 years of academic style bass guitar was all I could take, and I put down the Bass, picked up a guitar, and decided to take a few steps forward on stage by becoming a Singer/Songwriter. It was a hobby, and passion at first, but at age 26 I decided to give it a real shot, and hit the road in a tiny little four door sedan. I went back to Charleston to sing for my supper, and it worked. Over the next three years, I sold around 500 cd's out of that car and a few scantly clad busses, coined my own genre (American Modern Folk Music, AM/FM like the radio stations) lived on some sail boats, lived at Awendaw Green, and then a great friend of mine took me to Saint John USVI, where I was promised a gig. That gig was with David Wegman, and it was amazing. I fell in love with two things on that trip, the Caribbean, and my soon to be fiancé, Marlise. Truly a double case of love at first sight.