My first memories of music are my parents playing quartets once a month on Tuesday nights. My Dad played (plays) 'cello and my Mom was a Juilliard trained concert violinist. Just hearing her practice was unreal and almost spooky to me. Her clarity and precision (traits I didn't inherit) I remember like it was yesterday. Other music memories were a) hearing Hey Jude for the first time, riding in the back of a VW bug in the summer of '68, b) watching my older brother as he placed the needle on the single of Lady Madonna on the turntable and hearing that intro that sounded nothing like anything I'd heard before, c) listening to Jimi Hendrix in my brother's room, dark and with black lights lighting up swirling posters on the wall and feeling not just a little scared (I would have been under 10).
So it was Beatles, Stones and psychedelia 'til I was a teenager at which point my cousin (10 years my senior) had a full on country/western swing band called the Cobble Mountain Band. In the summertime I would somehow get to see them in bars in Western Massachusetts. They turned me on to Asleep at the Wheeel, Merle Haggard and EmmyLou Harris and possibly under-age drinking.
I finished High School in England and stayed for another two years playing with the band we'd formed in High School and then played with an Irish Country and Western Band, playing Wack Fall the Daddyo and Little Ole Wine Drinker Me.
I came back to the States and went to Berklee College of Music in Boston for 2 years, played folk music in Taos, New Mexico for 9 months, came back to Boston, drove a truck and played in country bands around New England for about 10 years and then moved to Nashville.
My first gig 'out of' Nashville was with a band that included David Ball and Vassar Clements. New Year's Eve, 1990 in Cincinnati.
My last gigs were with Pure Prairie League, Over the Rhine, Buddy Miller and Fugitive Glue.
In between, I played in many countries, almost every State and played on many, many CDs and demos.
My last session was guitar overdubs on a Sam Baker CD.
I am currently living in Williamstown Australia, outside Melbourne and teaching guitar, banjo and ukulele,.
Live gigs are mostly with my wife Sherry Rich, as the Rich Family, (with brother Rusty (of the Scaredies) and sometimes with Momma Rich, Noelene), our duo NashVegas and most of all with our children's music band called The Mudcakes (with Sue World).
wife sherry, son ramsay, daughter freya at Port Fairy '07 the missus and me
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