I fancy myself a creative type. Thank’s to a combination of new-fangled streaming technology and countless hours spent drawing architecture in a studio, I’ve consumed thousands of albums-worth of old-timey country music, rock & roll, blues, bluegrass, and all else outside and in between. These influenced have stirred within me a creative inspiration of output, from personalized covers of older songs and brand-spankin’ new ones I’ve written myself.

Roots music is not a complex form musically, in comparison with something like classical or jazz; that is not the point. It is often much closer to literature than it is to pure musical expression, although it isn’t just spoken-word with a melody. It’s poetry you can dance to. Roots music is a marketable vernacular; it is folk and pop. It is Alan Lomax’s tape recordings of Lead Belly in the Library of Congress, and it is the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show.

Roots music is accessible. It is the ultimate music of democracy: by the people, of the people, and for the people. You do not have to be educated or classically trained to express yourself through it; in fact, when we look at the greats, it seems to help if you are neither of those things. Big, smart words only detract from the art of songwriting. The great songwriters use predictable rhythms and one-syllable words to convey the most complex of emotions. Woody Guthrie could have written a master’s thesis on the inequities of the justice system and wealth distribution, but instead he said it all in twelve words:

“Some rob you with a six gun, some with a fountain pen.”

This is what I love about roots music, and in a world of reality TV, entertainment news, doomscrolling, and AI content, we need all the authenticity we can get. The day an LLM writes a better song than Dublin Blues will be the day I quit working at this… and I plan to work at it quite a while.

TLDR: I play and sing classic old-timey music, as well as original songs, with a mission to entertain.

Pickin’ with the capo on 3 in Manitou Springs, CO