I began studying the guitar at the age of nine in Knoxville, Tennessee. I did not experience the traditional apprentice model of study one might expect in the Appalachian foothills, picking on the porch surrounded by uncles and neighbors armed with fiddles and banjos, but rather began taking private lessons at a music store before actually displaying any desire to learn to play. At first there was a group of people in the classroom setting, taught by tandem instructors. Within six weeks, I was the only remaining student and it was determined that I had enough natural ability that I should continue in private study. Jim Whaley was my first teacher. He was a “jack-of-all-trades,” the kind of player who could play “The Wildwood Flower,” “Time In a Bottle,” or “Spiders and Snakes”, and then just as easily hold down the chair when the Glenn Miller Band would swing through town. He introduced me to a lot of styles and insisted that I learn to read music right off the bat. I would study with Jim for several years and periodically visit him for “check-ups” when I came back to town.

During the High School years, I began studying classic guitar with Larry Long, who had built a large and regionally prestigious studio of students and had written many accessible compositions for beginners and intermediate players that helped to develop technique while jumpstarting a sense of confidence with typically difficult music. He was a stickler for the melody! “Where is the melody? Sing the melody while you play,” he would say. Of course I was hooked, all while playing in clubs on “the strip” around the University of Tennessee with my rock band, Spellbound, that primarily performed my original songs, as well as playing in the pit for The Sound of Music, holding the guitar chair in the All East Tennessee Jazz Band, marching with a mellophone (french horn) with the band on Friday nights, and singing with the Madrigal Singers all over town every December.

Since continuing formal studies at Berklee College of Music, Austin Peay State University, and Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt, I have built a resume that resembles darts thrown over the back of my head at a map while blindfolded.

For example, I have played:

“Wabash Cannonball” with Roy Acuff, 

“When a Man Loves a Woman” with Percy Sledge, 

“The Age of Aquarius” with The 5th Dimension, 

West Side Story (film-score edition) with Nashville Symphony,

West Side Story (musical edition) with Studio Tenn, also on stage at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center,

“Something In Red” with Lorrie Morgan

“Chega de Saudade” with Nashville Jazz Orchestra,

“Amazing Grace” with Jim Nabors, 

“Barber of Seville” with Nashville Opera, 

“Will the Circle Be Unbroken” with Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, 

and “Mountain Music” with Alabama (hundreds of times…).  

I have played Bach, Brouwer, Villa-Lobos and Giuliani for Sharon Isbin at Juilliard,

“Hey Good Lookin” (Lost Highway) and “Crazy” (Always: Patsy Cline) on the Ryman Auditorium stage,

“The Gift” with Jennifer McCarter and the McCarter Sisters on a rodeo show in Montana with Juice Newton and John Conlee, after which Jenny, the twins, and the whole band saddled up and rode all day together on a 65,000 acre ranch, 

“If You Wanna Play In Texas, You Gotta Have A Fiddle In The Band” with Alabama at Houston Texan’s stadium for 72,000 folks, where President George Bush (Sr.) was a guest in the dressing room.

I have played in the debut pit orchestra for The Nutty Professor, Book & Lyrics by Rupert Holmes, Music by Marvin Hamlisch, Orchestrations by Larry Hochman, Directed by Jerry Lewis.  

I have played the Hollywood Bowl, the Grand Ole Opry, the Astrodome, the Kennedy Center, Daytona Motor Speedway, hockey arenas from Vancouver to Nova Scotia, and on the bed of a flatbed truck in the parking lot of a Piggly Wiggly.

For the record: The Piggly Wiggly parking lot is not the least glamorous place one can play. 

peace, pcb   

Photography courtesy of Allison Steinquest at Smile, darling - Photography

I began composing almost immediately after picking up the guitar, as you do when you want to play but don’t yet know how to play any songs. Just yesterday I overheard my wife Erin tell our five-year-old, who was not pleased with the song selection on offer, “If you don’t like any of these songs, then write some of your own.” Not exactly how it happened for me, but close. I started composing with simple guitar pieces and played around with lyrics as well. I was especially encouraged by Larry Long, who had written books of guitar pieces for his students to play, and shortly thereafter I began writing songs for my rock band, often during Algebra class, which became somewhat problematic. 

The first two record albums I ever purchased with my own money were Dressed to Kill by KISS and Atalaya de la Guitar Española by Emilio Prados. I bought the KISS record because I knew I could learn to play their songs and pretty quickly figure out how the sausage was made. Plus, I was thirteen. Prados, on the other hand, was a master flamenco guitarist from Spain who, for some unknown reason, gave a performance at my school and autographed my record. The seeds were planted for divergent pathways in my brain as I quickly followed with Segovia, Williams, Bream, and Parkening, even as I stood for hours at the stage door of the Fox Theatre in Atlanta, waiting for Elvis Costello to appear. Somewhere in between, my collection of reference material began to include the likes of John Denver, Jim Croce, Simon & Garfunkel, Jimmy Buffett, and Willie Nelson. A friend’s father, who lived up the street, had some connection to a radio station and brought home boxes of promotional records, which he shared with me. Enter Wes Montgomery, George Benson, Kenny Burrell, Herb Ellis, Howard Roberts and Charlie Byrd among many others. But the one that stopped me in my tracks was a record called Breakfast in the Field by Michael Hedges. It was recorded live to two-track in 1981 and I had never heard anything like it. I had no idea how he was doing what he was doing, but he was playing all original music that combined the spirit of all these musical styles into one coherent form of expression. 

In 1982, while I was in Knoxville playing at the World’s Fair, Michael Hedges played at a small church-turned-music-venue called the Laurel Theatre. I may have paid $5.00 for a ticket, if that, but I was in the front row, maybe six feet from him. The moment came when he reached up and completely re-tuned his guitar for the first time in the show and it was as if he had slapped me in the forehead! THAT’S HOW HE DOES IT! Good grief, it seems so obvious now, but we did not have YouTube in those days. I left the show at intermission because I had to go straight home and begin experimenting with alternate tunings, immediately! Within three years I would release my first solo guitar album on Benson records, featuring all original material and recorded live to two-track, just like Michael did it. 

In college, the focus quickly turned to Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms. Dr. Willis Hackman announced on day one, in no uncertain terms; “Music is a German business.” Dr. Hackman and I would ultimately spend countless hours together evaluating my analyses, which was both instructive and excruciating.  We would eventually bond over our mutual love of German Shepherds. Dr. Jeffrey Wood was from the next generation. He introduced Strauss, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and Satie into my reference library. He had studied with the great Gilbert Kalish at Stony Brook and was determined to preserve the lineage. Dr. George Mabry, a nationally known choral conductor who had been the musical director at Opryland in the early years, took me under his wing and taught me about show construction, how to run a rehearsal, and how to demand excellence from myself and my colleagues. Before leaving Austin Peay State University as a sophomore, I would re-orchestrate Verdi’s Falstaff for the opera studio, arrange music and conduct orchestras for multiple shows, and receive a number of commissions. 

At Berklee College of Music in Boston, the focus shifted to Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, and Quincy Jones. This was a different environment altogether. Not only was I out of the South for the first time, I was in classrooms and ensembles where the students who spoke English as a first language were often in the minority. The study was in Jazz on its surface but was really about the workings of popular music. This was a time of intense work on ear training, sight-singing, arranging, and orchestration. I also experienced playing in the “T” (subway) stations from time to time, which incidentally is considerably less glamorous than a Piggly Wiggly parking lot (see GUITARIST notes above).

I left Berklee and went on a national tour of a Broadway show. I returned to APSU to continue my studies and also joined the guitar studio of the great John Johns at the Blair School at Vanderbilt, attending both over the years as my performing schedule allowed. I eventually received my degree from APSU in 2012, a mere thirty-one years after entering as a freshman. One cannot rush such things.  Since then, I have recorded five more albums of original guitar music, composed music for original musical theatre works, music for film and television, numerous incidental scores for straight plays, music for orchestra, and songs of many varieties. My music has appeared on Music from the Hearts of Space and All Things Considered (NPR), CMT, GAC, country, jazz, college, and public radio stations across the country, and on Equity theatre stages in Nashville, Kansas City, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, and New York City.      

peace, pcb   

I became a producer out of self-defense. After receiving a couple of modest royalty checks in the mail associated with my first solo guitar record, I thought it might be nice if the dollar figures could be higher in the future. It seemed only natural that if I worked more closely with the record label and we coordinated our efforts, everybody might win. I was twenty-three, but not twenty-three like Taylor Swift was at twenty-three, I was just twenty-three. I met with the A&R director the label had assigned to me, told him how I wanted to help in any way I could to promote the record and see if we could increase interest and sales, maybe build some marketing strategies together and enhance my career and artist profile at the same time. He listened to my twenty-three-year-old pitch, somewhat impatiently, and when I finished, he simply announced: “Instrumental music is dead.” The meeting was over. It was 1987, ironically just before Kenny G was about to explode and go on to sell over seventy-five million records… of instrumental music. Kenny G was an outlier, of course, and I wasn’t really delusional about the potential popularity of acoustic guitar music, even at a young age, but I have learned some valuable lessons since walking out of that meeting, not the least of which is that there are a lot of perfectly valuable numbers that fall somewhere between “dead” and seventy-five million.

“If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself” so the saying goes, but that assumes that you know what the hell you are doing in the first place. When I recorded my first solo guitar album, I remember the producer sitting in the corner talking on the phone for much of the day. I even recorded one of the songs while the engineer and I were waiting for him to return from lunch. I remember feeling somewhat insulted at the time, but over the past thirty years or so I have learned what it takes to be a great producer. Hire the best people for the job and let them do it! Now, in retrospect, I have decided to reframe that first producer’s laissez-faire approach to my sessions into a glowing endorsement of my obvious and prodigious expertise. Of course, that wasn’t really the case but I learned very quickly to rely upon the engineer in much the way one comes to trust the nurses in the doctor’s absence. I have also produced my own recordings ever since.  

Once you begin doing something, you actually have to learn how to do it. Lucky for me, Nashville was over-run with recording studios and engineers who knew what the hell they were doing. These were the days when editing meant knowing how to use a razor blade. Now that every kid with a laptop or iphone can produce a record, it seems hard to remember how slowly the digital revolution crept along within the music industry. Producers and engineers were dragged kicking and screaming from their Studer two-inch analog tape machines, but gradually made peace with the tide of technological innovation. A lot of the engineers that survived the transition are still thriving in their creative endeavors and I have been fortunate to work with a great many of them over the years. Nashville is also home to some of the best musicians in the world many of whom have become my friends and colleagues as various projects have brought us together. As a result, I have learned to call the right people for the job, whatever it may be, and have developed a sense of when to take charge and when to get out of the way, with varying levels of success.

peace, pcb   

I fell in love with Maria. She was a junior and had recently been crowned Miss Teen Knoxville or some such thing. I was fresh out of the 8th grade and had the best seat in the house, the guitar chair in the makeshift orchestra pit directly in front of the stage. Maria would sing: “Perhaps I had a wicked childhood, Perhaps I had a miserable youth, But somewhere in my wicked miserable past, There must have been a moment of truth.” Her name was Katrin and she was as close as I would ever get to Julie Andrews, but that was just fine with me in 1977. Of course, what I really fell in love with was the theatre. It seemed like magic and yet I was able to contribute somehow to the outcome.  This gave me a sense of agency that I could not even articulate at such a young age, but the collaboration with all of these talented people to create a real-time work of art was not unlike the feeling I received from playing on the football team, only without the bruises and concussions.

I was recruited to Austin Peay State University as a singer, due to four consecutive years of selection to the All-State choir, one of which was conducted by Dr. George Mabry who ultimately became a mentor to me. What I really wanted to do, however, was study guitar performance. At the time, APSU turned out to be the only state school in Tennessee with an actual guitar performance major. It was also close to Nashville and, at the time, had only about twenty-five hundred students, which translated into countless opportunities to participate in everything, even as a freshman.  As a music-major I joined every ensemble available, but I also stuck my head into the theatre department whenever I could. I started working on the stage crew pushing a broom and moving set pieces around, which led to helping with audio, then designing sound, then composing incidental music.  Once the Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts was established at APSU through an initiative spearheaded by then governor Lamar Alexander, I became the music director, conductor, and contractor for the Center’s summer stock theatre program. I cut my teeth on the likes of: The Robber Bridegroom, Man of La Mancha, Brigadoon, and Dark of the Moon. The program was designed to give students the experience of working with professionals, and many of the leading actors, directors, choreographers, and designers, were hired from Nashville and New York. So in the middle of nowhere, near the Kentucky border, I music directed and composed music for Arthur Kopit, for example, and met Scot Copeland for the first time. Scot was the Artistic Director of Nashville Children’s Theatre, a professional theatre that produced theatre for young audiences. Under Scot’s leadership, NCT would become a leading Equity theatre in Nashville and be named one of the five best Children’s Theatres in the United States by Time Magazine. I worked with Scot for thirty years until he passed in 2016, just a year after he and I staged our original musical Jack’s Tale at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. 

As close-knit as the songwriter and musician communities are in Nashville, the Theatre community is even more so. Although Nashville is experiencing some growing pains due to its current “It City” status, the sense of family amongst the Theatre tribe was especially strong as I was getting started. It seemed as though virtually every theatre professional in town was connected, resulting in an organic symbiosis amongst the many different companies vying for a place at the table. As a result, I have been able to work with a great many of them for over thirty years. I have served as music director, conductor, and performer for companies such as Nashville Children’s Theatre, Tennessee Repertory Theatre, Nashville Shakespeare Festival, Vanderbilt University Theatre (Fred Coe Artist in Residence), TPAC ed. (Tennessee Performing Arts Center education), Humanities Outreach of Tennessee, and Mockingbird Public Theatre, among many others. Below is a list of highlights:

David Alford’s performances of A Christmas Memory and The Thanksgiving Visitor by Truman Capote. 

I composed the scores and performed live alongside David.  We performed one or both of these works for fifteen seasons in Nashville venues including The Tennessee Performing Arts Center, Historic Belmont Mansion, and Lamar and Honey Alexander’s living room. Mrs. Alexander directed me with my somewhat travel worn guitar case to please enter through the kitchen. (A moment I’ll never forget.) 

Lynn Marie’s one-woman show, Wrap Your Heart Around It.

For Lynn, I arranged the music, created incidental music, music directed and performed. The show was workshopped on Martha’s Vineyard, showcased at Hudson Theatre Hollywood, performed a four-week run at Falcon Theatre (now Garry Marshall Theatre) Burbank, CA and won “Best Production” in the 2012 United Solo Theatre festival New York City, after which Marsha Mason hugged my neck with tears in her eyes. (A better moment I’ll never forget.)

Playwright Laurie Brooks’ Between Land and Sea.

I composed a song and incidental music, music directed, and served as sound designer. The new work was developed and had its debut production at The Coterie Theatre, Kansas City, which was the only time I got to work with Laurie Brooks, Scot Copeland, and Jeff Church all at the same time. (I can still feel the heat.)

Jack’s Tale, which Scot Copeland and I wrote together. 

It premiered at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, where Scot, Dan Brewer, and I loaded in on Monday and, along with cast and band, gave thirteen performances from Tuesday through Sunday, all the while eating our way across Georgetown. (This was our last show together.)

Mockingbird Public Theatre’s first production of The Glass Menagerie. 

I composed incidental music and then performed live in the shadows of the balcony of the Wingfield apartment.  During one performance, the audience consisted of six people, four of whom were personal friends. Our friend Dianne suggested we all just go out to dinner, but instead sobbed through a box of tissues during her semi-private showing. It was 1994. David Alford played Tom. The role of Laura was given to a nineteen-year-old actress named Erin, who was awarded Nashville’s “First Night-Best Supporting Actress” award for her Laura, in spite of Mockingbird’s humble beginnings. Just as David Alford and I would develop a special performance rapport with the Truman Capote pieces, Erin instantly seemed to dance her lines with my underscoring. (Erin and I married nineteen years later.)

If It Rains, original musical written with Laurie Brooks, workshop at New York University’s historic Provincetown Theatre.

Here I reunited with Laurie Brooks and Director Jeff Church. Laurie and I were invited to participate in the twentieth year of the New Plays for Young Audiences festival held by the NYU-Steinhardt Theatre program. It was an intense ten days, culminating in public staged readings, during which I would perform as “the orchestra.” (We missed Scot, but knew we were working together because of him.)

Dr. George Mabry’s original work, An Elegant Obsession.

I served as orchestrator, music director, and conductor.  The show fittingly debuted in the George and Sharon Mabry Concert Hall on the campus of Austin Peay State University. I began by reviewing George’s work as it was coming together, sharing my reactions and making little suggestions. Then I facilitated and produced piano/vocal demo recordings of the songs. Then I helped him to envision the scope and scale of a possible showcase run. Once I agreed to orchestrate, I had to decide who to involve in this project, which meant contracting the orchestra. I had become quite protective of my friend’s work and needed people who were not only up to the task, but who I knew would share in the enthusiasm of the experience. Eventually he asked me to music direct and to conduct the performances, which quite literally felt like the passing of the Baton. When you are young and eager, you can’t wait to grab the reigns, but when you are older and your mentor steps down from the podium, it feels like the end of something you believed would always be so. (I am grateful to have had a chance to repay my mentor in some small way.) 

Examples of my Theatre music can be heard here.  I hope you enjoy them.    

peace, pcb