I was born in Concord, Massachusetts on Dec. 12, 1977. As a child, my primary interests were reading, photography, video games, and by the age of 7, alpine skiing. I also recall spending a fair bit of time with my brothers singing nonsense verses into a tape recorder.

I began playing electric guitar just before high school. I was also playing trumpet in the school band, but neither I nor anybody within a half-mile radius was particularly delighted by my practice sessions, so the trumpet was put to rest. About this time I started writing songs. My friend Casey Muratori and I began a strict regimen of wee-hour writing and recording sessions (see the above bit about singing nonsense into a tape recorder), and some of our first-penned numbers include "Mushroom Man", "Giraffeattack", and "You Might Say You're Leaving but this Shotgun Says You Stay".

In 1995 I enrolled at the University of Colorado, and four years later I graduated with a degree in Humanities. This heroic accomplishment seems even more astonishing when one considers that I also found time to practice guitar and play in a band titled "Purple Moose." I did learn some useful stuff in college, like the origins of the European pastoral lyric and the names of some of Frank Zappa's poodles. I also learned that you should never attempt spoken-word Nietzscheian aphorisms as verses to a classic bluegrass song.

By the time I graduated college in 1999, I was desperately trying to forget everything I thought I knew about electric guitar and become a real bluegrass musician. At the same time, I was developing a rather unhealthy obsession with Irish and British Folk music, particularly Richard Thompson, Fairport Convention, The Bothy Band, Paul Brady, Planxty, and Nic Jones. This led me, Jordan Moretti, and William Downes to our grand experiment in genre-bending musical alchemy, the Single Malt Band. We achieved many successes, touring extensively and mainstaging (verb?) the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, High Sierra Festival, and a slew of other, less incredibly-prestigious festivals. Even to this day, our unstintingly devoted friends and one-or-two-score of fans really think we're something special.

After playing Telluride, we did what most bands do when they're just beginning to taste the sweet bonbon of success they've struggled for so many years to achieve: we went on hiatus. With a sudden glut of time on my hands, I began a crash course in traditional Irish music, playing tenor banjo and DADGAD guitar, and joined forces with Sean Sutherland, Jessie Burns, and Christel Rice in the Wayfarers. We played all over Colorado, and earned distinction as one of the best (i.e. one of the few) traditional Irish acts in the American southwest. In 2003, we placed second in the Telluride band contest. In a couple short years we've managed to play a host of festivals and venues, performing with acts as diverse as the Yonder Mountain String Band, Boys of the Lough, and Psychograss. We've also managed to make an annual ritual of our St. Patrick's Day performances at Boulder, Colorado's Mountain Sun Pub.

In the summer of 2004, I had the opportunity to record an album of my original songs with Ben Kaufmann of the Yonder Mountain String Band (who along with Single Malt Moretti, is another alum from the hallowed halls of Nashoba Regional High School), the great dobroist and producer Sally Van Meter, telepathic drummer Marc Dalio, keyboard virtuoso Erik Deutsch, and a wonderful singer, KC Groves.

These days, I'm playing electric guitar with the Great American Taxi, playing a lot of solo acoustic shows, writing songs, learning fiddle, trying to read and excercise more, and eating as much Italian food as possilbe. I'm putting material together for a new studio album due for release sometime in 2016, if anyone is still buying records then. Hey, we're muscians, not business majors!

take it easy, -JH