...It was just past midnight, in a dark and empty room in downtown Toronto, Canadian Blues and Jazz artist Champagne Charlie was teaching me some of my first Ragtime guitar licks. He was seated on a chair we had just picked up in the street, and I was sitting on my guitar case, lapping up the music...
I guess that's when I got really serious about the Blues.
....or maybe it was that Blind Blake LP that I found standing alone in a store-rack on Harvard Avenue in Boston when I was 15 years old - for the price of 59 cents!
Early on, I felt that my mission in life is to help perpetuate the Blues, to help others understand the beauty that is the Blues, and to keep it alive.
Over the years I have worked at promoting my musician friends in any way I can.
I ran the Fingerboard folk coffee-house in Toronto in the late 1970's, and organized a number of small Blues and Jazz concerts to help expose my musician friends to University of Toronto audiences (as I completed my BSc. degree).
I spent a few years as a freelance photographer and journalist, interviewing and reviewing my favorite artists for local newspapers or magazines, including rare interviews with artists who refused to speak to the press.