Unsigned Entertainment

Writing has always been a passion of mine.

Beginning in my school days in southwest Michigan , I would write poetry.  I found early on that with poetry I could express myself, talking about my views of life along with people and situations that touched my life.

Even though I do write fictitious things from time to time, the majority and probably the best of my work has evolved from actual events.

A short time after relocating to Arizona in the mid 80’s my poetry evolved into songwriting.  Meeting my very good friend Eric Graf was a blessing to say the least.  I had a song in my mind but since I was too shy to sing and I didn’t play an instrument I wasn’t able to convey my song.  My budget at that time didn’t include hiring musicians or studio time either as it was depleted rapidly each Friday raising a family.  Eric is a great musician that needed a studio built, I was a building contractor and a songwriter, a combination that gave birth to my first ten or twelve songs.

Recording with Eric gave me the opportunity to work with great people like Mark Prentice on keyboards,  Arvel Bird on fiddle, Tom (Bleu)Mortensen on steel guitar, Steve Wayman singing lead vocals and Cheryl Wolff doing backup vocals.  Needless to say the first songs were sounding really good with all of that talent.

Completely hooked on songwriting by this time, I bought a Fender acoustic guitar and began to teach myself how to play guitar and with the great patience of folks like Eric and my good friend Dallas Wood, I managed to fumble through eight or ten chords creating a rhythm and a new found respect for those who could actually play a guitar.

My songwriting continued on in Arizona co-writing with folks like Randy Huffman, Steve Wayman,  Dallas Wood, Jessie Fanion, Stu Hassis, Gretchen Rodriquez and Todd Martin.  We wrote country songs, Christian songs Blues songs and folk songs.  Great times, great friends, great music.

In those days 13 different publishing companies from Nashville to Hollywood were accepting the songs and Margie Hunt with Sony Tree Publishing had picked up one of them at an Arizona Songwriters meeting.  Ten years later the song had still not been cut but it had been additional inspiration to get me to write the next one and hundreds more since.

These days I live in Tennessee .  Still writing and recording songs, I have been blessed with meeting my good friend Dana Jordan and her son Ben.  Dana and Ben own Music City Tunes in Nashville .  Dana does the production for my new songs and helps me with the melodies while Ben and Dana play and record some pretty awesome tracks that bring the songs to life.

I did have the good fortune of getting reacquainted with Tom Mortensen after I came to Tennessee and Tom laid down some great steel tracks on a new song.

Throughout all of these years of songwriting and hundreds of songs later, it seems as there is still someone nearly every day doing something that brings a new song to mind.

 

 

 

Thanks to everyone.

I hope you enjoy the music.

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