I taught myself to play guitar over 50 years ago on a $29.95 Stella Harmony from Sears Roebuck that my parents gave me for my 14th birthday. Mostly acoustic and unplugged, I’ve played summer camp sing-alongs, Student Center coffeehouses, live music for folk dancing, open mics, folk festivals, one klezmer concert, community gatherings, back-up for my kids’ music recitals and song festivals, and every sort of jam session imaginable. But not on the Stella - in 1974, I spent part of my student food budget on a used 1965 Martin D-18 from a Cambridge pawnshop, which I still play today.

I started writing songs in college. I took a one-semester course in Songwriting as a college junior, shared originals with friends, kept lyrics in notebooks. I was inspired by Phil Ochs singing poems by Edgar Allan Poe (The Bells); Alfred, Lord Tennyson (The Highwayman); and the Men Behind the Guns. I collected and arranged covers of songs written by others, learning what I did and did not like, what I could and could not perform, and what I aspired to create and what got listeners to respond. I wrote songs for celebrations and special occasions.

It wasn’t until my mid-40s, married, established in my career and with three kids becoming adults, that I began writing songs in my own voice. Many are stories from life experiences and my perspective on my journey. These are the songs I share on this website.