Favorite artist: Gillian Welch (pic) Less is more. On Gillian's 1998 album, she and David Rawlings are the only two players on most of the songs. Producer T Bone Burnett joins them on piano on one song ("Whiskey Girl"). Plus, the way these two play live is extremely incredible.

Favorite Christian artists: (not necessarily CCM)

Leslie/Sam Phillips Leslie (Sam) Phillips CCM pop/rock queen of the eighties. Though she claims she only wrote propaganda for the CCM industry, favorites like "Strength of My Life" and "By My Spirit" are some of the best praise & worship songs ever written.

Mark Heard From the first time I heard "Strong Hand of Love", I was hooked. Besides, his background vocalists include Julie Miller and Sam Phillips. Nothing is better than to hear Sam sing with Mark.

Chris Eaton (pic)

Gary Chapman I saw him in concert by himself once, for free. I also saw him host Sam's Place live and play with a couple of other artists on the bill. He is incredible live and very gracious.

Bruce Cockburn (pic)

(My favorite type of music is folk) and I like these folk artists:

Lucinda Williams "Right in Time", "I Lost It", and "He Never Got Enough Love" are just three of the outrageously wonderful songs that Lucinda Williams recorded. When I heard Ramblin', I thought the way she did Delta blues was it. Then she does traditional folk like no one else, then she does contemporary folk like no one else.

Iris Dement (pic)

Julie Miller Blue Pony is a classic. After buying Orphans and Angels, I couldn't stop collecting her albums whenever I saw them for sale. She's wonderful because of her innocent vocals and honest outlook on life.

Patty Griffin If A&M hadn't gone down, where would she be now?

Dar Williams (pic) Heavenly vocals and funny, but "poignant" outlook on life.

Suzanne Vega (pic) She fits the stereotype of artists I like best: She's not a folk singer, but that's the best way to categorize her.

Kim Richey (other link) I wish I had a great reason for moving to Nashville like she did: "I thought what Steve Earle was doing was what was going on in Nashville." Man, her glimmer project is awesome with Genesis producer Hugh Padgham.

Townes van Zandt Though he's gone, this Texas singer-songwriter is amazingly incredible with words and music.

Bob Dylan (pic) I picked up a random biography about him and was hooked for days. It was really long and I had stuff to do, but I was mesmerized. What an incredible songwriter. For the record, I love Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" better than the Byrds' version.

Favorite country artists:

Allison Moorer (pic, see addt'l link), Gram Parsons, Steve Earle, LeeAnn Womack,

Other favorite artists: Tori Amos (pic), Bach, Sheena Easton, Fiona Apple (pic), Wallflowers, Third Eye Blind

Favorite producers: T Bone Burnett, Kenny Greenberg

Instruments I play: Piano, guitar

Instruments I want to play: mandolin & fiddle, bass

Click here to listen to my favorite MP3 files

Music in General
I pretty much just listened to my parents' stuff-you know: praise & worship, classical. They also had some secular rock, but I wasn't much into that. I didn't have a radio back then, but what impacted my passion for music was when my parents started playing a Christian radio station every night when I was going to bed. The volume was pretty loud and I listened to it when I realized that a lot of the stuff was pretty good. I fell in love with "Jesus Will Still Be There" by Point of Grace and decided to buy my first album. The album was Point of Grace's debut.

So from there I bought Margaret Becker's Soul album three months later. It was on the "rock" side and was a little too much for me. But I continued buying albums here and there, when my taste in music started to change.

So now: I have been susbscribing to CCM here and there- three years altogether. I have approximately 300 albums. I have been songwriting since I was thirteen, and have written about 300 songs.

Of course, it was Carolyn Arends who introduced me to folk music. She was brilliant and I thought,'oh, folk music is good.' Then I got into more dangerous and fulfilling Christian folk music like Mark Heard and from there on discovered people like Gillian Welch and Lucinda Williams. Contemporary/ traditional folk, bluegrass, etc. is my favorite type of music. It's gorgeous, intellectual, liberating, and can be delicate and fierce musically. Like Gillian Welch quoted Townes van Zandt on saying, "There are only two kinds of music: the blues and zippity-do-da."