Born Barcelona Spain of German, English, Irish, American Indian Heritage. Mom bought me a guitar at a yard sale when I was about 19- it was a kind of Ovation imitation. Then guitar tech Ben Harper (of the Folk Music Center) advised me it wasn't worth reversing the bridge since it wasn't worth much to speak of. So I played right handed for the first couple years picking around tabulature. Somewhere along the line I realized my old broken finger on my left hand just couldn't make chords, so I switched to lefty. I'd been hanging around the folk and watching Ben a lot, and when I left to work in Montana for a year Joel Harper sent me off with a lap steel to borrow, and the notion that I could somehow play the rhythm with my thumb and the melody with my fingers. For the first couple years it seemed like it was just too hard, but somewhere along the line something clicked. By that time I was more committed to recovering my Indigenous ancestry and leaning heavily toward those musical styles. But all the while I'd been filling up journals with what I called poems, which eventually became songs after I discovered the melodies in Indigenous sounds. The Folk Music Center in Claremont was my first musical community before I recovered some my roots through pow wow and ceremony. Without the patience and the long summer nights with the Darrows and Harpers I'd probably never have learned to fingerpick. Without hot summer days with the Redhawks at the drum, and being kicked off more than once, I wouldn't sing for something other than my own purposes.
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