A Los Angeles-based musician, filmmaker, writer, and podcaster. He was lead singer and autoharpist in a band called The Acres, which had a large following in Europe, Australia, and Latin America, and did a mix of bluegrass, hymns, and neo-folk. He still plays autoharp for guest appearances on albums, with his latest appearance being on an album by Omewenne. His film “La Lucha” was an official selection in the Reading, Pennsylvania, Mexican Film Festival. And, he has published five memoirs, with a sixth on the way.
“That’s how I write music a lot of times is I just play around with chords until I have something I like.”
“And then (my father) left, and when he left, music left. I didn’t have the confidence of my own voice anymore… I just had no self-confidence when it came to music.”
“I stayed quiet for years and then I got this autoharp… I bought it but I had no idea how to play it.”
“I moved to Hollywood and… there was this store… so I went in, and I said, ‘Can you teach me autoharp’ and he said, ‘No, but I can teach you music’ and that was when I got started.”
“I was just kind of a creative force that drove the band forward in a lot of different directions but mostly in the sort of neo-folk direction and turning a lot of songs that weren’t folk into folk music, like punk rock or heavy metal.”
“He wanted to focus on his film career, and he's won a couple of Academy Awards since then. He's a documentary filmmaker. He does a lot of music documentaries… So, the breaking up of the band was the right thing to do for them.”
“I still sing, and I still perform. Music is just one of several ways that I express myself.”
“They sing it, and they sing it loud. They say loud is good. They say if you hear your neighbor singing off key it means you're not singing loud enough. So, it really taught me music, I mean, I finally learned how to read; limited, but I can read music and I can really sing it.”
“I know a lot of those songs by heart now because I went to so many conventions and regional singings and sang in churches in Alabama and it taught me harmony, of course.”
“Once that happened, I got discouraged and said, You know what, I don't think I'm gonna make another film. I think I'm done with that.”
“That’s when I found this whole new voice that I had been suppressing for most of my life.”
“Grandma Joan”
“Snake Handler”