🎹 The Story Behind My Music
Before you listen to a single note, I'd like to tell you a story.
For most of my life, people have known me as a forensic document examiner, writer, investigator, educator, and student of law and ethics. Those roles became public. They were meaningful, fulfilling, and allowed me to spend nearly 40 years helping people understand behavior, trauma, truth, and resilience.
But they were never the beginning of my story... music was.
I began piano lessons at four years old after my parents discovered I couldn’t stay away from an old, badly out-of-tune piano the previous homeowners had left behind. I would sit for hours banging on the keys, fascinated by the sounds. Eventually, they decided formal lessons might be quieter and more disciplined, since it appeared I was never going to stop.
When I was five years old, my only friend, Dennis, was killed by a train in front of me. I didn’t know how to explain grief. I didn’t know what songwriting was. I only knew I needed somewhere for my sadness to go. So I sat at the piano.
Looking back, I believe that was the first song I ever wrote.
By the time I was nine, I was an only child with busy parents, no friends after losing Dennis, and little sense of where I belonged. Years later, I would learn that Asperger’s had shaped many of those childhood experiences, though none of us understood that at the time. Music became the one place where I always fit.
I was writing songs regularly. I created lyrics, melodies, and my own handwritten piano notes that looked like complete nonsense to anyone else. They weren't proper music notation or proper English, and I was likely the only one who understood them. But when I looked at the page, I could hear every note in my mind.
So, long before anyone knew me professionally, music had already become my emotional home. Throughout my childhood and young adulthood, music remained a constant companion. I earned numerous first-place piano recital ribbons, played piano, organ, piccolo, and bassoon, sang in choirs and bands, and was part of the school dance team.
One of the most important people in my life was my grandfather, Henry. He was my rock - my safe place.
Then Alzheimer’s slowly took my Grandpa Henry away from me. I was a teenager when, one day, he no longer remembered my name. He thought I was a younger version of his daughter — my mother.
Not long afterward, he was gone.
After he died, I stopped volunteering.
I sold my piano.
I convinced myself I would never play again.
But I couldn’t stay away.
Music had been my refuge for too long.
Later, as an adult, I performed a Joan Jett tribute at state and county fairs for several years and sang lead in two bands. But my public life became focused on handwriting, human behavior, ethics, trauma, and the stories people leave behind.
I wrote books.
I taught.
I testified.
I investigated.
Yet at the end of those days, I always came home to music.
It was where I celebrated.
It was where I grieved.
It was where I found peace again.
It was where I asked questions no textbook or sermon could answer.
Before piano became my lifelong instrument, I had also wanted to learn drums and cello. I never had that opportunity. Today, through my Yamaha digital piano, I can finally bring some of those sounds into my own compositions. Piano remains the heart of my music, but I often blend it with cello, strings, guitar, and other voices that deepen the emotion of each piece.
I don’t choose instruments by formula.
I choose them by feeling.
Many years ago, I had a traumatic solo performance experience that deeply affected my confidence as a singer. Although what happened was beyond my control, I carried it with me for a long time. In many ways, I still do.
I continued singing at home and through karaoke, and later released my first instrumental piano CD in 2011, but I kept my vocals private for decades. Unwilling to let my musical history go, I took voice lessons because I wanted to strengthen a naturally soft voice and keep it alive.
That is why my original songs remained mostly unheard for most of my life.
Until now.
The songs on my albums were never written to chase trends or fit neatly into genres. They were written from the things I still refuse to become numb to: truth, compassion, animals, memory, time, and the way we choose to treat each other.
Some songs began as childhood poems.
Some began as melodies scribbled into old notebooks.
Some were born from heartbreak.
Others from hope.
All of them were written from lived experience.
So this is not a new chapter where I suddenly became a musician in my 60s.
Music has been with me since I was four years old.
This is simply the first time I’ve opened the door and invited the public inside.
Thank you for coming in.
🎹 The conversation continues here → Explore the Albums 🎹
Learn How I Create My Music and Videos
They were right.
I never did.
When he moved into a nursing home, I became a candy striper so I could spend more time with him. Even after I was older than most of the other volunteers, I stayed because I wanted to be near him.
On my days off, I would sit at the nursing home piano and play for the residents. They would call out songs, and if I knew them, I played them by ear while they sang along.
Those afternoons remain some of my happiest musical memories.
