The Official and Totally True Bio Page
Here's the 'unofficial' and obligatory, long-winded artist bio.
(don't read this if you have attention deficit)
I have been doing this for quite awhile now.
I was born to German immigrant parents in Prince Rupert BC and was raised in a very musical famly. I grew up all over British Columbia but mostly in the northern parts like Prince Rupert, Williams Lake and Vanderhoof. Places you have to look hard to find unless you live up there yourself of course.
In our house growing up there was no such thing as a member of the Strauss family who was not musical. You had to play at least one instrument or at least sing well to even be considered. When I was younger the house was filled with German folk music and choir recordings. As time went on my older sister brought home vinyl records of the Carpenters, Neil Diamond and Elton John. The first record that did it for me was Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon and Garfunkle. I was 12 when if first heard that one at my neighbors house. I wore out that album until it was too scratched to play. (sorry neighbor). I still hear that influence in my music. The poetry and the chord changes; The acoustic guitar style and the harmonies that somehow have indelibly been printed in my brain somehow even though I went on to other influences during my teen years like Aerosmith and Steve Miller band.
I played drums for years in local rock bands until after high school I got a job working in the northern lumber camps. I couldn't practice drums there naturally so I bought a guitar. That's where this journey of being a singer/songwriter started for me; 19 years old, hunkered down in a winter logging camp 130 km from the nearest small town with the smell of pine sawdust and chainsaw oil in my clothes. I would operate my 667 Clarke grapple skidder during the day and try to figure out folk-style finger picking patterns all evening. Noel Paul Stookey, James Tayler and Mark Heard were my main instructors via a small tape recorder I kept with me.
I left logging and northern BC for BC’s Okanagan Valley when I was 22 and that’s where I started doing small concerts around Kelowna trying to see if I could write a song or two that people would want to actually sit through. I recorded my first ‘album’ in Malcolm Petch’s basement. He had figured out a way to use two cassette decks together to bounce audio for multi-tracking. 4 tracks was about all you could get out of that system before it was too deteriorated to bounce anymore. I payed him $50.00 for his brilliant work as studio engineer and bought a bunch of those white blank cassettes for about $50. I hand drew the cover art myself and dubbed the copies on my home stereo system I bought at Costco. Total project cost was $150.00. I sold 500 copies that summer @ 7 bucks each at my shows. That payed my rent that summer and launched me into a whole new way looking at life and buying groceries.
I have been happily married now for 22 years and have raised 4 kids (two oldest in university now). We live in Kelowna BC and 'we love it here' as the slogan says.
