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1. Do you come from a musical family?
I was raised in a "Primitive Baptist" environment.  It was very strict and musical instruments were not allowed in worship service or for a time, not in the home. However my mother was a beautiful singer and she was always singing around the house. My dad also has a very good voice. I had an uncle who knew a few chords on the guitar and when I was 14 he showed me a few chords.  
  

 2. What you’d be doing if you weren’t making music?
Probably working with the elderly.  I love talking to older people, I feel such a connection and comfortableness with them. They have answers and a true humbleness in their spirit. I think it’s because I grew up with older people around all the time.

 Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors, Ricky Skaggs’ Kentucky Thunder, George Jones’ Greatest Hits, Jim Croce’s Greatest hits  and put all of The Bluegrass Album Band’s CDs in a box set and let them count as one. This would cover all of the music that I love. Singer/songwriter, Hard core country, rock, and the best bluegrass ever recorded. 

4. Musical hero you’d most like to meet?
I would like to meet Aretha Franklin because she is the greatest singer that ever breathed! I was always so mesmerized by how much power she has and yet so much delicate control when the song requires it. God only made one Aretha Franklin and one Ray Charles and then he destroyed the mold! 

5. What is your hidden talent?
Well, I used to be a good basketball player. I loved it as much as anything. I still play when I get a chance, but the body don’t cooperate like it once did. Being from Kentucky, you have to love bluegrass music and basketball!

6. What sound do you love?
I love the sound of the ocean. It calms me like nothing else, I long to hear it. When I hear the tide come in, it feels as if it crashes against my spirit and the bad goes out when it does then I feel a brightness that I don’t feel any other time. When I am on the road and play near the coast, it doesn’t matter how late at night it is that we arrive, I must go out there and feel the water on my feet and hear that precious sound. It also makes me know there is a higher power than I. I love the sound of the ocean.

7. What sound do you hate?
I hate sirens. I know when I hear the there has been a tragedy of some kind and that makes me so sad.

It’s a grim reminder of how fragile life is and it takes me a while to get collected after I hear that sound.

 

8. What fictional character do you most identify with?
I have been told that I am like "Henny Penny" thinking the sky is falling all the time. I guess I am that way but that’s because I really want so much to do things right and I am so human that I know that I will not do a "perfect job" so, any hints of things being shaky, I...panic...ha,ha

9. What piece of music/art/writing do you wish you had created?
I love Beethoven’s "Moonlight Sonata"; I hear a lot of the 70’s music being influenced by that piece. So I would have liked to have been on the piano bench when that went down. "Starry Night"the painting by Van Gough, something about that picture stays with me. I am pretty taken with Nathaniel Hawthorne’s writing so I would like to have written " The Scarlett Letter". That book has one of the best morals I have ever observed. One of the few examples of how revenge is often a blacker force than the wrong that was committed in the first place.

10. Favorite movie?
It’s actually between two, "Cool Hand Luke" and "To Kill A Mockingbird". "Cool Hand Luke" was the first "movie" I ever saw. It was at a drive-in, I wouldn’t ordinarily have gotten to do that but my aunt took my mom and me. I thought it was just so "Cool" how he ate all those boiled eggs! I was also young when I saw Gregory Peck in "To Kill A Mockingbird". I got the message in that one. I think I was visiting relatives in Louisville when I watched it.

I don’t read a lot. I really enjoy recorded books while I’m driving. The Di Vinci Code really kept my attention. I know it was a controversial book, but I found it very high drama and interesting.

12. Two people, living or dead, that you’d want sitting next to you at a dinner party
I would like to have dinner with Abraham Lincoln and Janis Joplin. Lincoln’s life has always intrigued me. He had major losses, saw the absolute worst of humanity and had to find a way to keep some kind of order. Therefore he had to make the hardest decisions of any leader in our history. I think the man knew that he was gonna meet his demise while in office, yet he didn’t run from it. In all that he saw and felt he still had faith in a higher power and I would just love to dine with him.

 

Janis was one of the most"broken hearted"people I have ever read about. I don’t think it was all of her doing. I think I would just like to tell her that people throughout the generations "got" her music and understood her emotion.

 
13. Favorite comfort food?
Ice cream is my comfort food. It’s soothing and can literally make me feel physically better but...it has to be chocolate!

 I don’t really look to people as role models anymore. I just feel that our heart and conscience should guide us and if we are truly "in tune" with those things they will keep us pretty balanced in the right and wrong aspect of this life.

15. What trait do you most value in your friends?
I love my friends that laugh and cause me to laugh. Not at the expense of others but laughing at life and learning not to take it too seriously. If I didn’t have friends that could do that I would be in a very bad place.

16. What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Being free from human frailties such as... fear of failure, pride and anger just to name a few. To be able to walk, do, and let it be, is a blessing. I think that would be my depiction of happiness. It’s simple to say but VERY hard to do.

17. Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
I’m sorry. I say it a lot and I truly am. But sometimes I haven’t done anything for that to be the response.

I guess I want to relay to everyone that my intentions are good.

18. What is your most treasured possession?
I don’t put much stock into material things, but I have a beautiful son, father, and stepmother that I treasure with all my heart. Along with my friends...those are the things that are most precious to me.

19. Which talent would you most like to have?
I would like to be a painter. I think there is so much that one can release from their soul when they can paint. It must be true because sometimes when I look at paintings they either make me smile, be reflective, or rip my heart out.

20. What is your Motto?
I don’t know if this could be considered a motto or not but it keeps things in line for me and reminds me that I’m just as human as anyone else, and that is the statement ’But There For The Grace Of God, Go I".