I started writing songs when I was isolated in eastern
Washington during the summers with my dad and people who liked to play with guns surrounded by orchards. I was about 12. I wrote the songs in what I thought was a
style similar to Cyndi Lauper, Pat Benatar, and Heart. In actual fact, the songs were terrible, but I didn't realize that until I came across them later. I kept singing songs I made up on
walks throughout my teen years despite not really playing any instrument.,I grew to hate keyboard music so much in the 80's that I forgot in about the 5th grade I got a little Casio keyboard
with a ROM cartridge. I could play 10 songs that came with terrible sounding accompaniment. But, it was all I had, and in a small northern California town, playing a dirgelike version of
Greensleeves was better than the rest of the entertainment available. I played that thing for years and then forsake it. I wiped my memory of ever playing it until I started to play accordion and
couldn't figure out why my fingers knew where the notes were. It took me some time to remember, I was so scarred from playing "Greensleeves." But ultimately, practice paid off and I have way better
accordion chops for it!
It took years for me to actually pick up an instrument, and when I did, it was electric bass guitar when I was probably 20. I still consider myself to be a bass player at heart.

gig listings. Duh!

Well, my dad thought Crystal Gayle was hot, so we saw her up in Redding. Little did I know that actually at that time this put me (in the manner at which Kevin Bacon is so often described) at one degree of separation from Tom Waits. Even so, I just remember looking at her hair and thinking it was heavy. I might have been 7 or 8 or something.
In my teen years I was fortunate to have friends who had a dad into rock and roll, so we saw INXS and REM and some other decent rock shows!

My favorite accordion is a Sonola 80 Bass with a lovely musette. It was rescued from a pawn shop and restored by the Accordion Apocalypse repair shop in San Francisco. I also have other squeezeboxes including an orange Titano Combo 'Cordion! I recently bought a Hohner Bravo, and even though it is made in China it plays well (scratch that -I just killed it, it's a piece of junk!!!). In addition to accordion I also play a banjo guitar made by Keith Cary, bass, uke, and whatever else I can get my hands on.

My mom had a Dakota Sid album which had a lovely version of "Cuckoo" on it, a scratchy Doors album, Rubber Soul, and Revolver. She played a little guitar and sang a little. One of her friends was into some cool stuff and I know at one point I heard and had an intense response to "Monica" by The Kinks later in life I could not explain except that I must have heard it in my young years, probably in her cottage. In middle school my grandmother moved to town and starting buying season tickets to the touring concert series in my little town. The artists touring represented many styles and cultures and came from many places in the world. I was inspired by their complex music and the magic of different melodies working together. I was determined to make magic like that of my own. I didn't know it at that time, but earlier in her life, my grandmother had played harmonium at her small town church. So in a way, my grandmother was one of my greatest musical influences, even though I never heard her play a lick! I loved Cyndi Lauper and Crowded House in later years, in high school becoming interested in Cole Porter, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and performing in musicals, singing in the fields.

I'm looking forward to pursuing collaboration with some local artists who've been asking me to play with them in the near future after some solo gigs are over.
My first band began when the guitarist walked up to me at a show and asked me if I wanted to be in a band. I had noticed we had been giving ourselves the same
weird haircuts when I kept seeing her at Yahmos shows. I took a quick bass lesson from my boyfriend and soon I was in a mostly girl punk band called The Phlegmings (because we were all so sick one practice) . Yes, call it Riot Grrl if you want, because that's what they were calling it. Shortly thereafter The Secretions rebanded and I became one of the singer/songwriters in the group, penning "Freaks Like Us" , "4 Speed Automatic Jesus", "I-5" and co-writing many others, as well as playing guitar.
The Phlegmings and The Secretions shared many members at first. But after living in a van
for a year after a disastrous tour where The Phlegmings disbanded, I left the band in some amount of irony for their own good, eventually working in a Halloween store which led me to going to a church where speaking in toungues and tearing up the bible was normal. But the music created by the pastor and his wife, an odd couple to say the least; was stunning on that off key piano she played by ear. I thought I would only sing in church from then on. But after a while she turned out to be a cruel person and as the pastor and his wife told me they would do, they drove their parishoners out. I left too, and spent some time in the literal and figurative wilderness, fasting and meditating, and listening to a lot
of Johnny Cash. I spent a year looking at mountain ranges and gold rush era gravestones
in the Sierras and learned how to actually play my instruments.
I played for some time in a band called The Grotto ( featuring members of Blossom Rock), with folky psychadelic original songs, and formed Ranting Manor, a guitar, bass, drums combo featuring Frank French. I played guitar and sang and we performed all my songs, some of which I perform now on accordion. Most of them were about space, love, love in space, and drinking.
For a year I was performing monthly to entertain kids at The Javalounge with original and classic kids tunes. Then I discovered the accordion, and it has been my main instrument ever since! It has changed the way I sing and write songs and inspired me more than guitar ever did, but I still enjoy collaborating on bass and guitar. I perform in the Sacramento/Bay Area! I put on an energetic live show!

I'd like to meet the very first advanced primate that took a bone and skin or rock and learned to send a chill down the spine with a boom. Tom Waits. Keith Cary. Oh wait, I already jammed with him! :). Ray Davies, Cory McAbee, Dylan Blackthorn, Jack Casady, Countless composers of the 20's and 30's blues and ragtime. Memphis Jug Band. Carter Sisters. Rev Gary Davis. Chet Atkins. Wouldn't mind sitting down with Mozart. And more!

One of my last shows with The Secretions was at McClatchy High School around 1996. It was a packed house. I had quit the band and it was one of, if not the last, show. It was very awkward as I had
broken up with the bass player, and painfully ironic because I was pursuing religion instead. So the band wasn't happy and I was, in theory, just doing it to not be a flake on the shows.
What really happened was I found some raw last little part of demon the people at the church hadn't exorcized yet and we gave a crazy raw performance, as I remember it. The energy was intense. Years later their next guitarist
told me he had been at that show and my performance inspired him to want to be in a band. He ended up in The Secretions! Well, what do you know!
More recently, I was fortunate to play a Halloween themed show with Jason Webley on what could conceivably be a last tour for him. There was a huge crowd there, the show was 5th Element themed, and I was the only other accordion player! It was great!

Village Green Preservation Society? Stingray Sam soundtrack? Bobby Joe Ebola's "F" ? It's hard......You know, it would have to be Petrojvic Blasting Company.