“I started playing and writing music pretty early, I don’t remember a pivotal moment that made me start, just remember always doing it. It may have begun when I was playing on our family pump organ, making up melodies. It always seemed to move me. I was probably about 6-7 years old at that time. Shortly after that my parents bought me a nylon string acoustic guitar, I would spend countless hours trying to learn chords, and playing classical music, of Vivaldi, Beethoven and Mozart, or catchy jazz artists, like Dave Brubeck, Stan Getz or Clifford Brown, whom my Father adored. Basically, records my Mother and Father had around the house.
“My first rock ‘n’ roll experience was my own purchase of Sweet’s 45′ single, Action followed by Fox On The Run. After that, there was no going back, I kept on buying…. there was, KISS, ZZ TOP, Black Sabbath, Muddy Waters, Bob Marley, Pink Floyd, Eric Clapton and so on. Eventually it brought me to Neil Young, Bob Dylan and songwriters of that era, which I think cemented the idea that this is me.
“Now, the actual moment that I stopped taking any ‘day gigs’ was at the age of 22, I was living in the French Quarter and had worked all kinds of odd jobs for the past three years around New Orleans. I knew at that point that if I didn’t give music my full attention and made it my life calling, it would never reward me. I am eternally grateful that I did. Music has saved me more than once.”
Thanks to Anders Osborne for the latest in our series of artist blogs. His new album Black Eye Galaxy is out now on Alligator.
