Mahjong

Jazz Standard

Composed by Wayne Shorter

Mahjong

NY Southern Tier's own reclusive shaman, at your service...

Instrumental Acoustic Folk with Prog Influences

Hello 

This will be at least my 4th try at writing a bio. so here goes.

I play Acoustic Guitar and sing. I write songs about a lot of people and things.  I really only play one guitar. Its an Alvarez that is made out of Mahogany. and spruce. I had a pickup installed in it.  The pickup is a " Fishman ". Id like very much to meet Mr or Ms Fishman some day and share fishing stories..

Any how... I record on Garage Band. I almost never  use the candy drum track... because Im not good at it.

I started playing Guitar at about twelve years old. My Brother Jimmy gave me a beat up Silvertone with a few strings missing. He gave it to me the day before he left for California with other hippies to spread love and peace and eat out of dumpsters.

I played pretty much non stop. I played the silvertone down to three strings. I had them tied together after they broke..  A

About a year or so after that my dear Mother bought me a brand new Alvarez with all six stings on it. It was beautiful! It was tiger maple... I was thrilled!  I wrote a lot of music at that age but no songs with lyrics. I hooked up with a bunch of guitarists in another town over and that's when things really opened up. We smoked, drank and played as often as we could. There was no limit. 

Skipping the specifics of all that teenaged crazyness. I got to working in the trades with my guitarist friend Tony. We called ourselves the  " piss poor painters " We wrote songs about that but never played them.

Life became different and I met my wife.. introduced by Tony ironically , and we had adventures together! We are still together and have a big family with kids that are getting older but are still good. A couple of Grandkids. That period of my life I put music away.. for 22 years,

More Irony: in the year 2000, My brother came over to our house and left a pretty cheap Carlo Robelli guitar. The night he left it I stayed up all night and wrote a song called " Lets get together " . It was one of the first songs I had ever written with lyrics. Of course it was a song about the passing of time and they way things were when I was younger.

From there, I pretty much wrote non stop. It turns out I had a lot of shit on my mind. It was mid-life. Like a steam roller, words and music plowed a path through my life up to then. 

I really dont know how many songs ive written since 2000.. but its a lot. I just wrote them and figured out how to record them. It took months to learn how to record one shitty lo-fi track and post it on the internet. I

I was a BIG STAR ! only no one knew it yet.. I posted on a site called acidplanet.com. My profile name was " Greenflea " Acidplanet is Long since out of business.. but for about 7 years I developed friendships with people all over the world.  Co-wrote some tunes. Had some tunes stolen by bandits..but didn't give a shit. I ended up making a CD with Carl Cutruff of New Jersey. He was a producer who took a liking to my songs. The CD was called " Always a Good Time ". It was never released. It is a good representation of what a good producer can turn a lowfi singer songwriter's  songs into. But not necessarily what I wanted my songs to be.
I began to play at open mics in about 2007 and 8.. One night I played at this bar owned by an old friend called " The Hilltop ". There were a lot of local musicians there and I did take some people by surprise with my songs. That night.. I had the makings of a band. Rick and Lumpy.. Bass and Harmonica.. and eventually Carl Heilgeist the drummer.  We played quite a few gigs. But we split up ... which I wont go into. LOL

But eventually I got together again with Rick and Larry, and we had a drummer for a while. All the while I kept writing songs. 

Im still going strong as a writer.. but honestly, Im slowing down because.. well.. I really need to record what I have written so far in case I lick the bucket unexpectedly.. which does happen to people now and then. 
Now, me personally? I do have Religious views and political views but I vowed never to put them in songs. Because nobody really cares it seems, until they find someone who hates the same things  as they do. Then it becomes negative. Since music is one of the only things that can bring us together, even when we don't speak the same language, we should try to keep it real. By real I mean pure self expression about something you love or, if you must, about some trouble in the past or present that does not name someone else as the bad guy.

So here I am.. new years day 2026. What to do? Well this year is going to be the year of real collaboration. Im looking to find folks who want to work on creating music as in cover tunes of people who want to exchange ideas in the form of music and words. Im open to collaborate in any way I can but as ive said, I rlly only play an acoustic guiter and sing.

thats me...

I hope you enjoy my songs. I know I will enjoy what others around the world have to offer. My favorite thing to listen to is a novice writer with words and music.. just pure expression from the soul as best they can. 

We really need each other. We need ears that understand why we do this.. because I really dont know why I feel the need to do this. I still dont quite understand why I sit and play and write.. just for the sake of it.  If I tell friends and family about it.. or tried to get them to a gig.. they go silent and change the subject 😂  Anyhow.

What about you?

Mahjong

Glowing Trees