My first public musical performance was playing rhythm guitar for a twelve-year-old child prodigy flat-picker named Allen Shadd in 1979. The kid and I knew each other from bluegrass festivals and he needed a rhythm guy. We played on a flatbed truck stage parked in a baseball field in Middleburg, Florida, outside of Jacksonville. I got paid $100 US for playing forty-five minutes which absolutely floored me. That was half a week's pay at my regular job.

We did a few more gigs together over the next couple of years but lost touch after I moved away. Allen started playing electric rock guitar, got fed up with gigging and became a plumber. Then he got the bug again in the mid-90's, put his chops back together and started winning every picking contest in sight, including the National Flat-Picking Championship at the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, Kansas in 1997.