I'm a white boy, lost in the blues in Southern California. I write songs, and I also play songs that go back centuries, just for the pleasure of doing so, and I was raised in a family where singing on the spur of the moment in three-part harmony was kind of nach'l.

I am also a citizen of a rugged, confused country where technology runs rampant and MP3 players have swamped the nation, beebop and doowop were invented and jazz came of age, rock and roll was born and the blues spawned in rough country, and where it is just as "genuine" to sing "Trouble in Mind" as to sing "Diesel Smoke" or "Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys" whether it sounds like the record or is your own version.

At the same time I do engineering for a living and write white papers full of gobbledygook, own several computers and cell phones and network devices and talk about the impact of the internet on modern ways of knowing and relating. So I obviously am not a farmer even if it is not my first rodeo. But I have been a farm-boy, and I have hauled nets, and dug hard quartz rock out of the ground as well, and stood dawn watches out of sight of all land, too.

I drive a nice car (which recently replaced a rambling scabrous old one) and do text messaging and email fairly often.

I say I is folk too.


A