I’m a singer, songwriter and guitar player who grew up surrounded by music and the music business. My maternal grandparents were owners of the first full time country music radio station in Nashville, TN. My father, Martin, emigrated from Germany to pursue a dream of working in the country music industry and co-founded the independent label CMH Records, setting up shop in the garage and side room of our family home in Los Angeles.
My own taste was more rock. I got my first guitar, a Fender Stratocaster around age 13, along with a Fender Deluxe Reverb amp. I was captivated by the sounds of David Bowie, Black Sabbath, Van Halen and Led Zeppelin, and tried to learn everything I could from my guitar heroes Frank Zappa, Ted Nugent, Jimi Hendrix, and many others.
In 1990, I took over the company, now CMH Label Group and I’ve proudly served as its president for the last 32 years. While I never stopped playing guitar, running the label meant making my own music had to take a back seat for quite a few years. In 2009, I began studying with a vocal coach and it was singing that inspired me to focus more time on writing, recording and producing original songs.
My first album, Garden of Edendale, began as a passion project and took 7 years to make. Released in 2018, many of the songs pull from my own life experiences. I tried to transform nostalgia into beauty, with a fair number of guitar-drums-bass driven jams mixed in. I started from scratch, began writing songs, recording and put together a great creative team, many of whom I continue to work with to this day.
Death Valley was my second album, which was released in spring 2020. I titled the album in honor of one of my favorite places on earth. Death Valley is always a source of inspiration and place of renewal for me.
El Camino Sierra is my third full length album of original songs and will be released in spring 2023. The further I progress as an artist and songwriter, the more I realize my favorite songs to write are usually the personal ones that tell stories from my life or from the lives of friends and loved ones.
El Camino Sierra (or The Sierra Highway) is the historic name of Highway 395 which runs through the Owens Valley of California. The Owens Valley has been called Payahǖǖnadǖ by tribes native to the area and interpreted as meaning “the place where water has always flowed” or “the land of the flowing water.” With the valley floor having an elevation of 4,000 feet and mountain ranges rising on both sides to over 14,000 feet, it is the deepest valley in the United States. I’ve been going there since I was a young boy and it’s a place of renewal for me. The High Sierras, the White Mountains, the Ancient Bristlecone Pines: the beauty of this landscape never fails to lift my spirit, and El Camino Sierra is the way there.
Most of us experience firsthand how music can change outlooks, touch our hearts, and transport our imaginations to new and different places. I hope listening to El Camino Sierra can take you somewhere that refreshes and renews your spirit as its namesake highway has for me.
