One of my first goals was to get good enough to play live at open blues jams at the clubs in the area. Do that on a fairly regular basis now, which has taught me a lot of the dynamics of playing in a band vs. woodshedding alone at home. I also sit in with local bands once in a while as well.

I play Hohner Special 20s mostly, using either a Green Bullet mike with a controlled magnetic element, or a vintage JT-30 with a crystal element. Started out with the tiny Pignose as a practice amp, fooled around a while with a Behringer X V-amp, which does some credible tube amp simulations, and now I primarily use either a sweet vintage Kalamazoo Model 2 tube amp scored from eBay, or my big 30 watt Peavey Delta Blues, a modern tube amp, another eBay score.

Influences include the usual suspects: the two Walters, the two Sonny Boys, and then the living masters like Kim Wilson. I live near Boston, and we have some harp legends right in our backyard, like Jerry Portnoy, Annie Raines, and Magic Dick.

I take occasional lessons from Annie, and belong to a harmonica club she started called the Boston Harmonica Innovation Project (B-HIP). Were working on some of her group arrangements of blues classics to do some future public performances.

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