I have been writing and recording my own music for a very long time. My recording career has gone through many phases of development, hopefully always in the right direction. I have endeavoured to improve the quality of songwriting, performance, and sound with each new project. Let me say, however, that I am not a professional. I am an adequate guitar player and not a very good singer. I attempt to mask these deficiencies by constantly improving production values and I do believe that I now turn out a pretty good amateur recording. A few singing lessons wouldn't hurt, though...

What follows is a brief history of my recording career, followed by my album covers and song lists.

If you want to skip by all of this historical drivel and go straight to the album covers, click here.

THE KID STUFF (age 13-17)
It started back when I was thirteen, recording hideous songs with horrible equipment. Using a microphone that belonged in the Smithsonian, a stereo cassette deck, and a recording 8-track deck, I made stereo recordings of my youthful compositions. I actually recorded three 45-minute albums in this manner, "Memories", "Back In the West", and another one whose name I can not even recall. This was awful stuff, but buried among the dregs one can find the occassional good chord change. Some of these have been plucked from the mists of time and used in new, hopefully, better songs. No tapes from the early years survived, but the sheet music is intact... locked and buried far from public view.

EXPERIMENTING AND GROWING (age 18-21)
The four years from 1982 through 1985 were my most productive as far as the sheer amount of music produced. My first technological improvements happened in 1982 when I got an excellent caroid microphone (which I still use today), a wonderful Cimar steel string guitar (again, still with me), and the 8-track was replaced by a second cassette deck. With greater conviction and a sense of musical adventure, I produced five albums in these four years. The music was primarily me singing and accompanying myself on guitar, using the two cassette decks to produce a primitive stereo recording. All too often I added some lead electric guitar on top, a mistake that age and wisdom have taught me to avoid. I am no lead guitarist. There are a lot of misses on these five albums, but there are also a fair number of songs of which I am very proud. Sound and performance quality were still pretty low at this point, but that would soon start to change.

LEAPING FORWARD (age 22-28)
In 1986 my recordings moved from the stone age to the modern age in a single day. I bought a 4-track cassette deck. Suddenly I was freed from the awful constraints of deck to deck recording. Multiple instruments, background vocals, and (most importantly) multiple takes were now possible. Instead of a 10 minute setup between takes, trying to get two cassette decks turning in synch and setting levels while performing, I could now do it over and over and over until I got it right. It was like being led from a dungeon into the light. The "Jupiter" album was the first to benefit from this new technology. Layered instruments, dramatically improved performance and sound quality, and ever improving songwriting made this a breakthrough effort for me. It was like nothing I'd done before and I remember thinking, "Holy #!%@, did I do that?" Next came the computer age and primitive drums produced by my Commodore Amiga. This allowed the "Portrait" album to mark another leap forward. The advent of percussion allowed me to stop relying so heavily on my shaky guitar playing and thus the overall quality of the recordings was again pushed to another level.

THE MODERN ERA (age 31-present)
After a 4-year hiatus from writing, recording, even playing the guitar, I picked it up again in 1995. Using modern software on a modern PC to produce a full range of percussion, bass, and other instruments (while still always using a firm foundation of guitars), I set to work on a new set of songs. My experience had taught me that quality was more important than quantity, so my goal was to take as much time as needed to produce four songs of the highest possible quality. "Snow & Sand" was the result. In terms of production and performance value, it is light years ahead my earlier work. I am still no great player and a pretty lousy singer, but finally I was maximizing what potential I do have. "Have A Nice Day!" introduced enhanced electric guitar effects, and "Sunrise" brought with it digital mastering via the wonder of the Mini-Disk and an upgraded 4-track system.

THE BEAT GOES ON
As of this writing in December, 1999, I am still working on new stuff, slowly and meticulously, with no plans to stop anytime soon. Here is a retrospective of the work I have finished thus far. All of these albums are intact and preserved on CD.