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I was born in Nome Alaska, raised in Juneau Alaska. I went to College in both Alaska and
Washington and studied expressive arts and psychology. Right now I am living in
Fairbanks, Alaska where it is warmer than where I come from in the summer and colder by
about 50'f in the winter. This will be my first winter in such conditions. (It's a good
thing I am getting to New Zealand for a couple of months!) It's been about 5 years since I got a guitar and began writing songs on it. I was always a poet and loved most getting to read them to people. It's the most appropriate thing that ever occurred to have become a songwriter because the guitar is a great tool for sharing poetry with people. I have two recordings. One I made in 1998 and another in the spring of this year. I plan on recording every two years to keep all my songs catalogued for myself and for anyone who gets to liking my sound.
My first recording is called Something More Than Beautiful. I would characterise it as
being thoughtful and maybe even pensive. I played mostly unaccompanied and kept things
very simple. My second recording is called Breaking Strings and is quite a bit more
playful. I worked with a handful of other musicians. I would say that my first recording was
about working through problems and my second recording is stories and fancies and still
a little problem solving. I played guitar for the first time in Bellingham, Washington
where I was going to school. A young man at a party taught me two chords. That night I
dreamt that he taught me more. So, I thought to myself that I wanted a guitar and
remembered we had one at my parent's house in Juneau. When I went home for spring break
I got it out of the basement. It had been just sitting around for 30 years pulling at
it's own neck with the strings still attached. Subsequently it was cracked at the
neck-body joint. I learned on it for the next year even though the action was high and
the sound quality bad. By the time I bought my Gibson a year later I could really
appreciate the sound of a good guitar. | Singing was something I loved as a child but dropped when I got old enough to be critical of myself. I just thought since my mom was shy of her voice I should be too. It wasn't until I lived in Denali National Park, Alaska in the summer of 1993 that I began to sing again. I sang wherever I wandered in the park because they warned that the bears needed to hear you coming. I spent that summer (between working as a maid) on trails or climbing mountains. I sang things I knew at first, my ABC's or my favorite songs but then I began to make things up. Most of the time the songs had no real words but would just consist of syllables and melodies that seemed to come out of the ground that I walked. These songs felt like gifts and like conversation with the places I went. I don't have an agenda yet of what to do with my musical production. My cup of tea is getting to play for people; getting to share my stories. I love to sing for people. It's rewarding to have made my recordings because it is an internal resource that I invested in and in turn is providing a bit at a time for me. It's like making a really good meal from food you had around in your own house instead of having to go out to a restaurant.
Right now, I am living in Fairbanks. I just got done working at a tourist attraction
called the Malamute Saloon. We did Robert Servace poetry, sang, danced, and made jokes
about Alaska. Now,I am working at a musical equipment store and playing my music in pubs
and coffee shops. I most recently played at the 14th Annual Fairbanks Summer Music
Festival, The Hunter Creek Classic Festival, The Anderson Bluegrass Festival, The Alaskan
Women's Music Festival, Hot Licks (an ice cream shop), and The Blue Marlin and I am
looking forward to joining Uncle Monkey in sunny New Zealand in November.
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