Susan, thanks.

Autobiography time? Hmmm...

I was born in Southern Illinois; most of my relatives are midwesterners. My favorite ancestors are Thomas Paine and George Burroughs, which probably explains both why I shoot my mouth off too much and why it has been predicted that I'll be hanged some fine day...

I grew up in Houston, and was most fortunate to discover folk music by accepting a part-time job while I was in high school, working for a neighbor who owned a little place called Sand Mountain Coffee House. I learned some of my first songs on guitar there, from Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, JJ Walker, Allen Damron -- such folk when we were all young. It was magic.

I live now in Amarillo, "interesting" town but pretty devoid of folk music, a few true friends and me mum here still to care for. I have one brother, who lives up in Fairbanks but comes down during the winter to enjoy our balmy 40-degree weather and only 10 or so inches of snow now and then. I have one son, now serving his second enlistment in the Marine Corps. I have no man, having lost the last one to a bottle; right now, can't see the point in forming that kind of attachment.

I play in a folk trio, moi (guitar, sometimes the tenor banjo), a keyboard whiz, and a viola. I'm a low whisky-voiced alto at best, a high whisky-voiced tenor more like it. The viola player is soprano, so we harmonize fairly well. We mostly do Celtic stuff when in public, there being the most call for that here, but we play around with '40s music, blues, all manner of songs.

There, more than you wanted to know. My life in four paragraphs.

Well, okay, I left out the weird parts...

Sarah