I was born in Charleston, South Carolina though my family moved shortly thereafter to North Augusta, South Carolina. We lived with my maternal grandmother in a small brick house that had once been the old city jail. The back two bedrooms were rather cell like because they were old cells! In the backyard there was some sort of human cage that my twin brother and I played on, sort of a gruesome Jungle Gym.

My musical life began at age 13 when my grandmother bought me my first guitar from Sears, a $14.00 plywood Silvertone. Now a capo is $18.00! I started writing my own songs immediately, and I still have a little schoolbook of songs from those days. At age 15, I studied briefly at the Alexander Academy which was run by the daughter of our town's founding father in the old family home. Mrs. Alexander was around 70 years old at the time and had been born in the house. The house was so big the front door was never locked because Mrs. Alexander lived in a few rooms upstairs which were so far away from the front door she couldn't hear you knock. I remember climbing the front steps, passing columns as big as redwoods, and pushing open the huge doors to enter a vast, dark world of oak paneling and Tiffany stained glass. Mrs. Alexander taught me my basic musical theory on the old family piano, a huge rectangular affair with flamboyantly carved legs. After each lesson I was allowed to poke about on an old melodeon that sat in the corner. I loved that melodeon - it was a beautiful little thing cased in rosewood with a sterling silver escutcheon that read " Merry Christmas, Sarah, Love, Pappa 1851". I still love the sound of melodeons, harmoniums, and accordions, and use them on my recordings to this day.

I made my first recording at age 18 under rather strange circumstances. This was no demo but the real deal, twelve original songs, recorded twenty four track, with the Dixie Dregs as my backing musicians! Through word of mouth I had acquired a backer who paid for everything including flying up the legendary Steve Morse from Miami each weekend and for the producer who wrote the string arrangements and conducted a real string quartet. All this gave me rather unrealistically high standards at an early age, and since then I've been pretty hard to please. Don't want any braindead slackers banging away on my tunes!

All through my 20's and 30's I've recorded and "played out" as they say. I've opened for a few famous artists - Kris Kristofferson, Billy Joel, Todd Rundgren - to name a few. Guess that leads up to now, where from the high hill of middle age I'm writing my best stuff. So click on discography and hear my latest!