What are some memorable experiences you've had hiking?

What was your dad like?

What was your mom like?

My father was the one who gave me the idea that a person could great pleasure digging into art, music, books. Because most of the influences around me determined that this was "sissy stuff." My mom passed along the kickass German work ethic.

You mentioned Captain Beefheart, and you have at least one CD covering his tunes. Did you ever meet him? Hear him live?

Never met Beefheart, but saw a fabulous performance with the Magic Band in Calgary at the old Hockey rink, they were on the low end of a bill that was topped by Quicksilver Messenger Service, who used to tour every year, each year with one less original member. Beefheart's group started out with a drum solo by Art Tripp, who began by playing the stage with squeaky plastic hammers. This turned into a full band version of Alice in Blunderland with a Beefheart solo on bass clarinet. After that tune was done, someone in the crowd (a galoot) cried out, "You asshole!" Beefheart replied, "Any asshole can be an asshole. But how many are worth a shit?"

The band played another instrumental, and a slow blues, Black Snake Moan. That might have been it. Half the crowd was yelling for more; the other half for no more.

My crowd in high school tried to imitate the look of the Magic Band for about a year, searching in vain for these baseball caps they were wearing with extra large peaks.

That was it for my exposure to live Beefheart. At one point Henry Kaiser told me there were openings in the Magic Band, and it was possible for us to audition (!) but we talked each other out of it based on Henry's assertion that very little improvising would be allowed.

I really love Beefheart's lyrics and music, particularly Trout Mask Replica, Lick My Decals Off and to a lesser extent, but still with a great deal of affection, Clear Spot and Spotlight Kid. Other stuff is okay, too. I can certainly see his influence on pretty much all avant rock, particularly in Europe. But I would not put him in the pantheon of my all time big influences like Coltrane, Duke Ellington, Willie Nelson, etc...

Where do you enjoy performing the most?

It is really hard to pinpoint exactly what would make a performance venue something special. Sometimes where you expect the least, you get the most. I recall a gig in an abandoned train car in an old satellite train station outside Stuttgart, with two hippies continually firing up a bong inches from where I was singing. Wonderful gig, great atmosphere!

Of course I love the whole idea of playing a really beautiful theatre, with a seated audience that treats you like you are Segovia.

Sometimes a totally chaotic gig is really fun. I'll never forget the Shockabilly gig in an old bomb shelter in Bergen, Norway. I had an American flag draped over the microphone, so I could wipe my brow and nose with it from time to time. (This was when Reagan was president.) Somebody in the audience set it in on fire, and while the whole front of the stage started going up in flames, there was a moment before panic set in where we were jamming, and no longer could see the audience because of all the smoke, and it was a moment of wonderful insanity.

If a concert is going really perfectly, I actually fill with dread because I know something bad is going to happen at any moment, and usually does.

Take care, keep the questions coming. I am going up on the roof to clean the gutters. Please don't ask me about this job. Lots of trees, lots of leaves. And it's fall.

What are some of your favorite archeological experiences?

It started with paleontology, we practically lived on top of a site in Boulder. The empty field to the right of us (there was an empty field on either side, both which were called "the empty field.") was a huge clay fossil bed full of all kinds of trilobites, petrified clams and ferns, etc.

I think the family trip to Mesa Verde started me off on a fascination with ruined, ancient structures. I used to really enjoy the western Ghost towns, however the magnificence of Roman architecture, and how cool it is to clamber around on, really got to me when my parents took us to Europe for half a year when I was in fourth grade. This entire trip was a series of great archaeological experiences, although I had to wait to come back to Rome years later because my father fled after one night, distressed by the sound of motor scooters.

He did takes us to Les Beaux, however, the ruins of a town carved out of hills of bauxite. Cardinal Richelieu sent troops in to trash this place because they weren't obeying him. What remains is a sort of mostly ruined town and fortress atop a butte....it is located in Southern France, nearby Arles and Nimes...these are all places I explored as a child, and was later able to take my own family to when I played at the nearby Mimi Festival one summer. The Roman aqueduct, The Pont du Gard, is also in this region, and is marvelous, shreeves climb on top and jump into the river below.

I already mentioned the hike to Daorsen; that has to be one of my favorite adventures in archaeology. The entire Yugo archeology thing was a lot of fun before they started murdering each other, particularly in Croatia...it is still pretty easy, cheap and safe to visit the town of Pula where there is a coliseum that rivals the one in Rome. But I have been skeered to return to Split, which was one of my favorite spots back in the day, a seaside town that was once the home of a Roman emperor who built an entire palace underground--the old city is now built on top of it--and at certain points you can go down under the city and wander around--farout! Nearby Split is the remains of an even older Roman village, Salona. I spent a day out there and had an amusing time. There was an Italian film crew wandering around bitching about how disorganized the site was. It is true. The whole thing about Yugoslavia was that Roman and Illyrian stuff was lying around in people's yards. The Dalmatian Guide to Archaeology actually has directions on how to find frescoes in people's barnyards.

A trip my own family took one summer more than 10 years ago involved hitting a lot of Anasazi sites. My favorite was Hovenweep, which is Ute for "sad, desolate place" on the border between Utah and Colorado, a really weird spot, not cliff dwellings, but strange castle-like structures built down inside riverbeds, rising up so they had a view of the entire plateau. Wild!

What initiated your passion for music when you were young?

It was the day after the Beatles were on TV. I hadn't seen them, except from a distance walking by the TV, but I noticed all the girls were talking about them and seemed to be in rapture. It was the first time I had seen guys getting positive attention from girls for anything besides sports or fighting. Since I was no good at either sports or fighting, I thought music might help me get a girlfriend. It works!

How did you get into the journalism angle, and when and why did it shift into performing?

What was the course of your musical 'career' as a kid, prior to opting for journalism?

We got cheap guitars from Woolworth's, $18 each. One guy got a bass from a mail order catalogue, but never learned how to play it, which wasn't much of a problem. I quickly got an electric guitar and amp, total cost for both units about $50.

We formed a band that basically played along with people's records, in a garage. Sometimes guys would hang around listening. Whatever band we played along with that night was the featured band. We would call people, for instance, and say we were doing a Kinks feature.

Next year (now we are in 7th grade), a guy who actually knew how to play a few songs taught me how to play the three note riff for Stepping Stone . This was the first song I learned. When a band of us could play this, I remember saying, "Great, now we know a song--now this band can go somewhere." The name of this band was The Moslems.

Next year I spent in LA, where a guy I was playing with made me realize I had to learn chords, even if it meant my fingers would bleed. I learned all the chords at first from going through a book of Bob Dylan songs. I remember thinking that all rock songs could be played with three chords--a common mistake.

The first professional band was Daytop Village, consisting of a drummer and two guitars. We played some parties where people dropped acid, but weren't allowed to play the prom. This disappointment was so great the band broke up.

Then I began a solo act, and began performing at the coffeehouse that opened on the University of Colorado campus. I was definitely the youngest guy to play there. Most of the performers were college age. I used to play blues numbers by Son House, Lightning Hopkins, and so forth, as well as some originals. As long as I didn't stay on stage longer than three songs I got a good reception.

In high school I got into a group of musicians; we called ourselves Blues Jeans, Tennis Shoes and the Colorado Boys, and this featured a string bass player as well as members of the marching band who we taught how to shriek on their saxes like free jazz guys. The
regular venue for this band was a coffeehouse that started in the basement of the First Baptist Church in Boulder. The audience dwindled down to nobody after a few gigs, leaving the room open for more exciting pursuits than gigs. For instance, I lost my virginity down in that basement!

When I moved to Calgary I used to give guitar lessons for a few years. Then I really pretty much stopped doing that much music for awhile, then got into a kind of jam crowd that used to play over the cable TV station. This is around the time of the journalism career, and shortly after this I got back into music full time and began releasing albums. I had always been into recording, though, we used to make lots of tapes on the old home 1/4 track machines, and I actually used to record one of a kind 8 tracks for various high school friends that liked my original songs.

Where did your journalism career take you?

It took me through the promotions adventure where I set out to become a reporter even though the new management philosophy at the newspaper was against it. I eventually triumphed, which was fun and meant I started making a lot more money, which I spent, at that time, on stereo equipment and weird records.

How long did you write?

I stayed on the staff of the Herald as a writer and editor for around 5 years.

Did you get published in any other media?

Besides being published in the Calgary Herald --the importance of which is mostly known to birds who do their droppings on the linings of their cages--during this period I also wrote quite a bunch for Coda magazine, the Canadian jazz monthly...(then monthly)...I did record reviews and some interview features with Lonnie Liston Smith, Woody Shaw, Julian Priester, David Liebman...it was also during this period at Coda that I wrote my most famous piece from this time, that is the review of Miles Davis' electric band that was NOT a pan like every other critic on that tour! This review is frequently quoted and reprinted in biographies of Davis and liner notes for CD reissues. I also did some freelance stringing for the Canadian national magazine, MacLeans. This meant I was contacted and paid to provide information, not actually write.

Then, after returning to music, you mentioned getting encouragement from Braxton. How did you connect with him?

In my final year of living in Calgary, I got involved with the Parachute Center for Performing Arts, which was funded by a grant from the then existing parallel art gallery program in Canada. That meant if a community lacked a certain type of artistic center, the government helped set them up. No, Dorothy, you are not in Oz; that is the way it was then. This was how we brought in a bunch of good musicians for concerts, although in Braxton's case it was the University of Alberta that paid for him to come in and do a solo concert. I was his contact and host in the city.

Before he came out to Calgary, it was Bill Smith at Coda magazine who played Braxton a tape of my solo guitar music. He really liked it, and encouraged me to get into music full time if I wanted my contributions to guitar language acknowledged. He was in town another two days and spent most of that time harassing people that hated my music in Calgary by engaging them in conversation about how good I was, and although they would pretend to agree out of politeness, he saw through that and would eventually say "He hates your music, I can tell." To affix a date to these happenings, just think about the movie Jaws just coming out. It was in its initial theatrical run, and Braxton insisted on taking me and my girlfriend and several other friends to see it. I think it was his 10th time.