The First Spark 

One of my earliest recollections of knowing who I was is when I was 5 years old out on my father's leaky old pound boat 50 miles out in the icy Atlantic bobbing and cascading through twenty-foot swells in an angry and treacherous storm. I loved standing out there on the bow tightly holding on to the railings where they meet at the tip while the boat would dive headfirst down into an oncoming crush of seawater, momentarily submerge, then suddenly explode up through the backside of the wave. My father would come up behind me, put his arms around me, and yell in my ear, "Isn't this great Peter? Isn't this life great?" On the ride back to shore, and on subsequent voyages, I would lie on the engine cover under a blanket and listen to the sound of the overworked motor moaning, and groaning as it pushed the old wood dragger through the sea. Snug under the cover, and warm from the heat radiating through the wood, I’d close my eyes and, in my mind, start rhyming words and lyrics to the atonal melody vibrating through me from the engine below. That pitch ignorant, mono droning wail, would be the soundtrack that I would use to turn strung out syllables, and colliding consonants, into coherent words with melody, harmony, verse, and chorus. That’s when I knew I had something. While I couldn’t have expressed it then, I knew deep down that I was born to be a singer/songwriter. Today as the years peel off and fall away, as the faces of friends and strangers parade by, and disappear into the gray of the day to day, I find myself late in the night and deep in the dark void of the road. While driving to my next show, I lie in the backseat of the van and close my eyes. The rhythm of the wheels and the relentless hum of the engine brings a flood of random lyrics, and melodies into my mind the same way that boat engine did 45 years ago. It's in these moments that if I listen real hard I can hear my Dad in my ear, "Isn't this great Peter? Isn't this life great?”