I grew up during the sixties in a home where my brothers and I had to compete with music for our mom's attention: the blues-influenced rock-n-roll of Janis Joplin, Traffic, Jefferson Starship, and The Who all blasted regularly from her sound system alongside the shouts and grooves in the soulful music of James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Muddy Waters, and B.B. King. My mother brought my brothers and me to our first concert before I was ten: a double-bill performance with James Taylor and Carole King at the Rochester Community War Memorial, a concert that left my young girl self amazed by the magic of live music. My girlfriends and I learned to play guitar at our hippie “free” school by picking Bob Dylan’s “Copper Kettle” and Peter, Paul, and Mary’s version of the spiritual, “Rock My Soul.”  

Later, during my teen years, I studied modern dance with Garth Fagan Dance, a practice that encouraged me all the more to listen closely to music.  Music surrounded my life; it provided the grooves, rhythms, and beats that kept me moving.  

I worked for the Savannah Music Festival and for the Western North Carolina Jazz Society. I volunteer for Duke Performances and for the Carolina Theatre, allowing me the opportunity to experience an array of diverse musical performances on their stages. I am currently working on a fictional story about jazz music in the early 20th century, inspired my late-grandmother’s love of the music. I have written music reviews for Nathan Bell, The Gravy Boys, Meshell Ndegeocello and Wycliffe Gordon and will continue to do so for more!

Visit my personal blog Minor Occurrences and More where I write essays about music, family, chance meetings, and rocks.