(people talking indistinctly) - I was born in Burlington, which is kind of a satellite of Milwaukee.

And so, you know, I've always been involved with Milwaukee because it's kind of like our cultural center around here.

I went to college to try to learn to be a classical guitar player.

And after a few classes there, the professor took me aside and he said, "You will never be a classical guitar player."

He just, "You don't have it in you, I can see it.

I'm going to tell you now so that you don't waste your time."

And of course, I was heartbroken.

But then he referred me to a guy up here by the name of John Strokes at the Conservatory of Music.

(gentle music) ♪ I sang the blues ♪ ♪ She got the feels ♪ ♪ Slipped off her shoes and kicked up her heels ♪ ♪ Peaches and cream she's teaching me to dance ♪ - And John Strokes really brought that out in me.

He recognized what I was leaning toward in my musical endeavor.

And he taught me, you know, the, he taught their old blues players, Mississippi John Hurt and finger pickers like that.

It's called finger style picking.

And that's, that's where I learned.

(gentle music continues) ♪ you might say that I got swept away ♪ - My musical style probably started early, early, early.

My first memory of being affected by music, I think was a vacuum cleaner.

You know, one of those canister vacuum cleaners where, ♪ Mm ♪ You hear the one sound and then somebody's vacuuming with the other end.

And so along with the one sound, ♪ Mm ♪ you hear another pitch.

And I think it was pretty early for me that I noticed those two pitches.

You know, they had a relationship between one another, and those were harmonies and some were really pleasant, some were kind of dissonant.

But I found myself singing those, those vacuum cleaning noises.

(singing in scales) My mom saw that I was, you know, kind of interested in music.

She bought me a guitar, and I took to that right away.

And I did a lot of repeating, practicing.

It would drive a person crazy.

I think anybody who's learning a, you know, anybody who knows somebody who's learning a musical instrument can relate to the craziness if someone's just playing a note over and over again.

But that's where I found myself.

Practice, repeat, practice, repeat for hours on end.

And as time went on, you know, I was in a duo that toured around the Midwest and, you know, did some commercials and had some commercial success.

And then the, a coffee house opened up in Burlington and they asked me to run the open mic.

And people just started floating into that place.

And we all kind of affect each other musically from week to week.

We write songs together, we play music together, and it's a little bit of heaven on earth.

(gentle music) ♪ Summertime was ending with fall around the bend ♪ ♪ with our situation pending ♪ ♪ I had some time to spend ♪ - The openness of musicians to share their music with other musicians and ideas.

In some things, maybe in business or in some situations, people have ideas.

They wanna keep them to themselves because they don't, they don't want to lose any of their originality and have somebody else pick up on that.

With music, it's, "Hey, check out the song.

I just wrote this, what do you think?"

And somebody will go, "Yeah, that's nice, but maybe, oh, I like that, but why don't you try this here?"

And there's this camaraderie even between people that don't know each other.

That's, I find that so often, and it makes for good music.

It really does.

♪ If the sun comes up this morning ♪ ♪ I still love you ♪ ♪ If the sun comes up this morning, I still do ♪ - To define my style for me would be Americana.

I think it's kinda roots music, maybe a little bit of blues, a little bit of pop.

It's something that's still being formed, I think.

And I certainly, my style is still being formed even after all these years.

I feel like a song exists somewhere out there.

And when you're writing you, if you're lucky, you pick up on it.

And you have that tend, people have tendency to, once they write a song, or some do, and I do.

But I try to work against that.

When you're writing a song, you have an idea come to you, you start writing that song, and then you have your own style that you try to put on that song.

But what I'm working at lately is to try to have the song be the way it came into my mind, and maybe even not have any of me in that at all, just wherever that song came from.

Try to find that and be true to that.

♪ But I remember what you said before you went away ♪ ♪ If the sun comes up this morning, I still love you ♪ - I wanna affect people in a good way and move them to be inspired for their own lives.

I want them to feel comfort.

I want them to feel empathy.

Love, sounds cliche, but it's really true.

My biggest passion is songwriting.

I'm a songwriter now, I think first and foremost.

And my passion is deep there, and trying to pick up on a song and perfect it.

And I find that that's the greatest, the greatest moment of the life of a song for me.

And Paul Simon said that too.

He said he would write a song and maybe it would make a million dollars.

But his most, his favorite moment in the life of that song is when it first came to him, when it first came to him, and he realized that it was a song.

♪ Surprise, surprise She's teaching me to dance ♪ ♪ Peaches and cream she's teaching me to dance ♪ (gentle music continues)