I grew up in South Carolina near the Appalachian Mountains. We lived in a house surrounded by giant oak trees and filled with music, live and recorded, which gave me a conviction growing up that the world was a sturdy, melodious place that would always make me sneeze. Some of my earliest music influences were the R&B tunes from my brother's glorious stash of 45's - Bill Withers, The Brothers Johnson, Carl Carlton - which I'd sneak into his room and play when he wasn't looking. A few years later I discovered folk and bossanova, playing our dog-eared Joni Mitchell and Astrud Gilberto records until we had to buy replacement copies.

Music and dancing have always been entwined for me--whether upbeat or a ballad, I dig a tune with a strong groove. In high school while training to be a dancer, I'd come home after long rehearsals and play the guitar to unwind. By the end of high school I was composing my own songs and performing them for family and friends at cafes downtown. Fearing that I'd end up a barista in a coffee joint if I stuck with dancing, I settled on a more lucrative future and went to college as a Latin major. That was the early nineties and my alma mater Brown happened to be enjoying a lively, innovative music scene. With inspiration in my headphones from Joni and Jobim, I began experimenting with alternate guitar tunings and signed up for some jazz and guitar performance classes. A year later I formed my first band with three college friends and began playing clubs in and around Providence.

After graduation, clutching my new degree, I packed up and moved to the folk music epicenter of the eastern seaboard, Cambridge, MA, immediately landing work as a barista in a coffee joint. I also began playing in the subways and coffeehouses around Boston, including the venerable folk mecca Club Passim, and recorded my first solo acoustic CD Volcano--six songs written in six different tunings which proved impossible to play all together at shows. A couple of years later, after having an opportunity to do a month-long tour in Europe, I came back to Boston and teamed up with members of the Boston-based rock band Groovasaurus to record and independently release my second album Living Room Dances, a fusion of folk, jazz, and Latin-influenced songwriting and a snapshot of my continuing exploration of rhythm and open harmonies on acoustic guitar.

Whereas the songs of Living Room Dances have the feel of reflective, composed poems set to music, my third album Good Again is a set of living conversations with people and events that have passed through and deeply impacted my life after 9/11, particularly from my experiences working with refugees at a resettlement agency in Boston. With the tunes on Good Again I also started moving away from my acoustic folk roots towards a jazz/R&B influenced sound, again having the privilege to collaborate with some of the best rock and jazz players in the Boston music scene.

These days I've traded in my acoustic Guild for an electric Ibanez, begun exploring the Blues in all of its many variations, and have traveled further backwards to the spirit of the R&B 45's I danced to as a kid under oak trees. I think it's the music most deeply rooted in my body, memory and movement. Comfort food for uncertain times and places far from home.

Stay posted for news of my new album to be released in 2010.