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I was born in California with a flyswatter banjo on my knee. Around the age of 14, my father and I moved to the
Haute Savoie, a beautiful area in the foothills of the Alps - all cows and
oak trees. A few years later I got interested in playing guitar after a trip from the north of England to Holland, and my father bought me an old Epiphone. I remember him asking me if I wanted a 6 or a 12 string, "huh?" I said. He showed me how to play a few chords and do some Carter Family style strums. Later he also gave me a 12 string, my main guitar these days, though it's been warped by time and the sun. A year or two later I got interested in the banjo he had - he played clawhammer banjo - and started learning to play it too. He's from a small town in Scotland, but I suppose I'm now a valid product of the Folk Process (see John Burke's introduction to his Book of Old Time Fiddle Tunes). Latterly, I've been living on the isle of Crete, rebuilding an old village house, and getting too much sun (handled now; a move to France, passing by Vermont, has brought all the cold weather one could wish for). |