I was inspired by Alanis Morsette and Sarah Mcglauphlin when I was 11 and my Mother bought me this guitar for my 12th birthday. We knew nothing of what we were getting into. The man at the music store said a classical guitar with a wide neck was good for learning on. I played it for months before I learned how to tune it.
That summer we moved from Woodinville Washington to Port Angeles. The small house had a loft that became my teenage bedroom.  I remember the smell. An old man had died there and the old furnishings seemed heavy and dark but fresh white paint made everything feel new. My bedroom was warm with the heat of the sun and bright with a sky light that my mother had put in. The most beautiful thing of all was the golden vibrations of my new guitar in that empty space. Aren't all teenagers delighted with reverb? I was. People ask me "What did you do in a small dead town and a Mother who didn't believe in cable." I'll tell you what I did. I wrote songs. Many of them.

I wrote my first song in that room. My first reall song. There were a few meandering melodies before then but they had no real stamina. The one that stuck was called "Shaggy Man." It was about a woman who's life was changed forever when she picked up a mysterious hitch hiker in the rain. His disappearance at the end of the song left her feeling haunted and moved. I found a magazine picture that kinda looked like my idea and I made him my mascot. You can see him looking back at you down a desert road with his guitar and his John Lennon sun glasses and his long biker hair. He's on the front of my guitar case. On the back of the case I created a b/w psychedelic looking text that says "Jesus Lives." It was 1997. Smiley faces and peace signs were in full swing once again and I was indeed involved in the Christian sub culture of that time. I desired intuitive living, getting along with everyone but was commited to my Christian beliefs. I even tried rewriting certain verses of the bible to sound like something a hippy would say. I had a very naive vew of the 60's. I imagined road trips with girls AND boys, in a hippy van, with long hair and hot days but never sweating and no leg hair and of course that song "Born To Be Wild"  would be playing and that other song "Wild Thing." Wild thing I think I love ya. As I recall I never knew the names of songs, even if I loved them. I just gave the song my own title which was whatever lyric I could remember. I called the National Anthem "Oh Say Can You See," clear up until the same year. Inspite of my innocent wanderings as a young thing, I had a keen ability to absorb the important elements of what ever music I heard, and I was able to write whole songs. By the time I was fifteen I had enough orginal material to play my first show during lunch at school in the auditorium.