About.
Losing my father to a work accident and getting a new step-father at a very young age would have a lasting effect on my life. My family moved from the day to day comfort and routine of the suburban lower mainland of British Columbia to the remote hinterland of BC’s interior, west of the town of Quesnel. There I experienced life without electricity, television, or telephone. My first memories of any music outside of children’s music were of the folk music that was quite popular in the early Sixties. At an early age, I was also a fan of Johnny Cash. When I boarded out to attend high school in Quesnel, I picked up the trumpet and got excited about Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass. My older brother brought home a lot of Beatles music and that had a big impact on me. At college, I discovered Rolling Stone magazine and Bob Dylan; I had a lot of catching up to do.
At university, I bought an acoustic guitar and taught myself to play guitar and harmonica at the same time. It was also then that I started writing songs. I was especially drawn to singers that could perform alone onstage, as well as artists like Bruce Springsteen and The Kinks, who wrote very descriptively about ordinary lives. Coffeehouses provided a great opportunity to test out my new songs. Taking a year off from school, I hitch-hiked across Canada with my guitar.​
After completing my degree in creative writing, I moved to Vancouver and struggled to break into the music scene there. I met a fellow named George Leger and along with some other songwriters we formed the pop/rock group The Love Weasels. We spent a lot of time and energy working up material, but we didn’t become very well-known. In that time, I also teamed up with lyricist Alan Millen, and we co-wrote a number of songs. Following the break-up of the Love Weasels, I recorded some children’s songs with lyrics by Alan, produced by George.
The album “Where I Have Walked” spans that entire period of time from my early songs written at university right up to just before recording began. I recorded this collection in Jay Williamson’s Kamloops studio because I liked the results that singer/songwriter Trevor Caswell had achieved with Jay. To add some extra colour and texture to different songs, Jay and I brought in various other musicians but kept the entire project acoustic.
