I don't remember singing before we moved to Wisconsin and I joined the Catholic school choir in fifth grade, at the age of 11...but I must have, because I've always known all the nursery rhymes and the melodies for them.

In school, we'd get out of class to sing for funerals - Gregorian chant, of course. I joined the Boy Scouts about the same time, and we did a lot of singing in Scouts. I loved Scout camp, especially singing.

My one sister was in choirs and then a camp counselor, and she claims to know every Girl Scout song there is. My other sister, the glamorous one, starred in high school musicals. My two brothers never sang much, but music has always been part of their lives. One plays guitar and worked for many years booking music acts. The other is a big fan, and introduced me to a number of good music acts. My dad would burst into song at any given moment, usually singing hymns or songs from the Great American Songbook. I knew all the beer commercial jingles, and we would serenade our parents with beer songs on long car trips.

I was in a Catholic seminary for 8 years, and we had music all the time, everywhere. We had folk groups and rock bands, and the usual choirs. I had music class every semester from kindergarten through graduation from college. My German professor also taught music, so we learned a lot of German songs. During college, I worked as a camp counselor. I paired up with another counselor named Joe McCarthy (he claimed to be related to the Senator), and we led the singing at campfires and did a Smothers Brothers act.

I was a Scout leader for about 20 years after college, and got to be known as "Crazy Joe, that guy that sings." I'd make up songs to annoy my kids, and I went to their classrooms to sing and tell stories and recruit Cub Scouts.

I found myself single again at the age of 44, and soon found the Sacramento Family Song Circle. I still sing with them one Friday a month. We sing from the Rise Up Singing Songbook, and it is rumored that I know every song in the book. Since 2014, I have worked as a volunteer for the editors of that songbook, and we now have two other books, Rise Again and a Pete Seeger songbook - I do the lyrics research. Oh, and I'm still in the church choir, and I'm now in three singaround groups and sing at nursing homes and such.

My passion is community singing, and I guess I've been known as a song leader since I was in college. It feels like community singing is a lost tradition, but I still sing every day and sing with groups a couple of times a week or more.

-Crazy Joe-