MAN AT WORK - Long Form

1960s New York City folksinger, two-time major label recording artist…

47-year Nashville studio session singer…

1999 Kerrville (TX) Folk Festival “New Folk” finalist…

three-time CLIO Award finalist…

writer of more than 400 cover and feature story articles for national magazines…

author of 32 books…

14-year advertising agency VP/creative director…

star painter…

40-year head of a jingle company…

NFL historian…

onetime regional and contributing editor for the 4th largest weekly magazine in North America…

cab driver.

That’s me. Occupational contortionist.

I got caught up in the folk music craze of New York City while at Fordham in the early- to mid-1960s, the journey starting when a friend invited me downtown to check out a folk trio in need of an additional singer/guitarist. Not long after, I joined them—that new four-man group quickly whittled down to just two. Pam Meacham and I would debut a 12-year professional career with a 45 rpm single on Dot Records in 1966 (“Get Together” Dot 45-16868) as the Children of Rain, though the label issued the recording as Pam Meacham and the Children of Rain (see Wikipedia). In 1968, as Ross Legacy, Philips Records released our 45 single “Makes You Wanna Sigh” (Philips-40620), a country-flavored folk-rock piece that led us to Nashville during the record’s promotion. Connecting immediately with supremo Nashville producer Buddy Killen, we returned to New York City and asked to be excused from the remainder of our Philips contract; a move designed to free us to record with Buddy. We moved to Nashville in August 1969, me writing for Killen’s Tree Publishing Company, the No. 1 country music publisher in the world, while Pam and I performed as a duet, mostly on WSMV Channel 4’s early morning “Ralph Emery Show” and “Noon” show. Buddy threw us a curve, though, recording us not in Nashville but instead, in March of 1970, taking us to famed Muscle Shoals Sound in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, for our inaugural sessions.

It was a wide-eyed experience for us both. Here we were, still soaking wet behind the ears musically, and we’re being recorded by Buddy Killen with one of the most renowned rhythm sections in recording history. One of my better songs came out of that session, “Santa Ana Wind.”

As Pam & Alan Ross, we would go on to perform on more than 400 live Nashville TV shows between 1969-76. (See YouTube) The special order double CD, Pam & Alan Ross – Master Sessions, includes 24 master recordings spanning our career (1966-76), including the two major-label 45s.

But when Pam bore our second child, I found myself looking at an additional career to augment paying the bills. Enter advertising.

SHORT, SWEET, AND TO THE POINT

Without a shred of experience, I talked my way into my first job as a copywriter, explaining that the basics of songwriting and copyrighting were the same: Tell it quick and sweet and with a hook.

Three years later, after a stop at another ad shop, I returned as a partner in the oldest ad agency in Nashville at the time, Culbertson, King, Condiles & Ross. In all, I was with four different ad agencies (1975-85; 1987; 1989-90), figuring creatively in more than 70 advertising excellence awards on the local, regional, national, and even international levels, including a trio of CLIO finalist awards plus the top marketing award in America—the prestigious EFFIE—awarded for CKC&R’s full-media campaign for Vanderbilt University football (1980). Pulling on my musical experience, I wrote and produced nearly all the soundtracks, many of them award-winning, for the broadcast commercials.

Hand in hand throughout my ad years, I was also writing, producing, and singing jingles, many for rival companies. What a magical little format—the musical equivalent of a sprint.

The timespan with jingles, from my first singing session for Binaca Mouth Spray in New York City, in 1967, through a 2013 lead vocal for Knoxville (TN) TVA Employees Credit Union, extends more than 46 years. In all, I estimate I’ve sung, written and/or produced more than 1,100 pieces of recorded music for radio and television. I’ve been heard on Captain D’s Seafood Restaurants, Tennessee Pride Country Sausage, Burger King, Toyota, Pizza Hut, Vietti Foods, Judy’s Hamburgers, Kia, FFA, and even two Democratic presidential campaign theme songs (1972, ’92), plus hundreds of single-market financial institutions and car dealerships.

Musically, while hard at it with jingles in the mid-1980s, I joined, along with Garrett Randolph, the folk nouveau group  S P A C E, founded and conducted by former Arista recording artist Scott Jarrett.

It was a novel trio—all of us lead singers, songwriters, guitarists, all with completely different vocal and guitar styles. We drilled for two years in rehearsal before we ever played out live, though we did a lot of recording throughout. The group touched on folk, country, pop, rock, and chant—all originals.

The album is quite an eclectic mix. The cascading harmonies on “Love Letter #1” are a brilliant testimony to Scott’s arranging talents. And we recorded the Gregorian chant-like “Sext” out in an old stone church in Dickson County, Tenn. The inspiration for that piece came from a retreat at a Trappist monastery, where the monks mesmerize with their round-the-clock chanting seven times a day. Best of all, Scott saw to it that  S P A C E  was a democratic venture from the get-go with regard to song selection, who would sing the lead, etc. At our very first rehearsal, he set the tone: “I’d like us to start with this song of mine, but I’d like you, Alan, to sing the lead (‘I Wanted to Say I Love You’).” Two years later, he picked that song to kick off the  S P A C E  album.”

PAINTING THE FINAL FRONTIER

Twelve years before  S P A C E’s  three-year run, in 1974, I reacted passionately to an old and odd inspiration emanating from one of my boyhood hobbies, astronomy. I envisioned painting a to-scale rendering of the nighttime August sky, resplendent with Scorpius and the Summer Triangle, that would cover the entire ceiling of the bedroom—all 411 stars, all 35 constellations, all in perfect relative perspective to one another from the pilot’s seat: the pillows. Degree of difficulty: recreate what appears to be stars in a dome onto flat wall and ceiling surfaces. Channeling my inner Michelangelo, I labored more than 80 hours through an arduous three-step process of marking each star point, flagging each star point so that the next mark could be seen when made from the bed, before finally painting each pinpoint star, some with several coats of paint if they are of brighter magnitude.

I found I could achieve a realistic reproduction of the sky with a certain kind of phosphorescent paint, which, when you turn off the room lights, reflects the light back at you for a period of time. Using a star map and employing a simple freehand theory that from any two points you can create a third point and make a triangle, I ever so slowly move about the room, bringing the entire circle of stars to a realistic scale without once having to redraw. It’s uncanny how it works out.

The ceiling star mural was an instant hit with the press. Both city dailies, The Tennessean and the Nashville Banner, did stories on the unusual astral art. The city’s well-read monthly magazine Nashville did a piece on it too. My father, Scottish-born American illustrator and fine artist Alex Ross (Alexander Sharpe Ross), hailed the wonder of his son’s celestial spectacle when he first observed it. “You’re the star painter!” he told me. Over a span of 40 years (1974-2013), I painted half a dozen star ceiling murals in private homes.

THE AMERICAN TOUR

In the fall of 1990, my ride down the advertising highway unceremoniously came to a close. Now, the jingles too were drying up. That summer I’d taken a working road trip, embarking on a most unusual advertising marketing stunt.

I hit the road with my latest jingle reel and my guitar, and called on ad agencies from Alabama to Virginia on a five-state tour I whimsically dubbed the “American Tour: mid-Atlantic leg.”

Ad people from all departments at each agency gathered into the conference room to hear and witness me perform a live acoustic concert of the new jingle reel—a dog and pony show rarely experienced by agency personnel at their own shops. As with the star ceilings, the press loved it, Marketing News catching up with my act in Washington D.C., and doing a large spread with photos on the ad oddity in the publication’s July 8, 1991, issue.

The agencies on the whole were appreciative but a bit uncomfortable, I think. For all their creative output, ad agencies can still be somewhat stiff in their corporate, day-to-day demeanor in the workplace.

But only one jingle came in from that two-week-long tour. Surely the drought would soon end? It never did. By the following fall, it became obvious I might have to do something far different from the high-profile jobs I’d known to that point.

Taxi. Taxi!

WHERE CAN I TAKE YOU?

The cab game is one tough road. Through the fall and winter of 1991, I would awake at 4 a.m. and head out to the headquarters of Allied Cab Company in Donelson, Tenn. Each day began by renting the cab for $30 a day.

Then you’d have to spend your own money to gas it up. As I was to learn, the pickings were lean after Labor Day in a town that didn’t have much going on back then. You’d race to get in line at the cab stand at the airport each morning, because an airport fare usually paid the best. Then you might line up behind other cabs standing at places like Opryland, Vanderbilt Plaza, or the Stouffer Hotel downtown. Most days you drove 12 to 14 hours just to make back your rental fee and the gas money you shelled out. It was humbling…and scary. I remember a woman cabbie telling me one morning while we waited in line at the airport, “Put aside money during the spring and summer, if you want to have heat in your house in the winter”—an ominous note for a rookie just joining the ranks in the fall.

I rescued unexpected periods of downtime on the job with artistic pursuits. During midday it was slow. You might wait an hour or two at a stand or till the dispatcher called with something. That’s when I’d pull out my song notebook and get to work.

One of those songs, “Fences Without Gates,” made it onto my inaugural album, Poet Warrior, recorded and released the following year, in 1992.

LIFE IN A LIMO

I’d always dreamed one day I’d be riding around in a limousine. I felt it was my destiny. Such are the rock dreams of pretenders and the everyday housewife. Only in this case, it came true for me—it’s just that I was the one driving, not riding in the back.

I had stepped up in the transportation business, quitting cabbing on New Year’s Eve ’91 and soon after latching on with Capitol Limousine in Nashville. They had their own scam with the drivers, too, like having to pay for any dents or scratches that might appear on the limousine under your watch. I liked cabbing better because it was anonymous. When I started driving the limo, I occasionally wound up picking up pickers and singers whom I knew from session work or ad people I had worked with. Awkward.

Not long after, I was mercifully liberated from my stay behind the wheel by one of the flukiest bits of incredible luck, I believe, ever to befall a person.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

The week before I took my final cab ride, I flew out to Phoenix to spend Christmas with my sister and mother. I landed on the Sunday before Christmas and had told them I thought I’d catch the Phoenix Cardinals’ final home game against New Orleans on my way in. Since there were few people at Cardinals games back then, a ticket was assured. Once there, being a dutiful fan, I purchased the Cardinals’ 1991 yearbook.

My life changed right then and there.

Perusing the publication during many of the game’s low moments (the Cardinals finished 4-12 that season), I eventually looked over the publishing credits. Near the top of the list was the name Dennis J. Flavin, President and COO of Professional Team Publications, Inc. (PTP); producers, as it turned out, of not only the Cardinals’ book but roughly 75 percent of the NFL, NBA, and Major League Baseball annual team yearbooks as well. I jumped about three feet. Dennis was my college roommate and best man at my wedding! We were also pages at NBC during our days together at Fordham in the early- to mid-1960s, both paging The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson when it was still recorded back in New York City. I was on the stage-floor level the infamous night that singer/actor Ed Ames castrated the image of a bad guy on a cardboard cutout with a perfect tomahawk throw, as Carson brilliantly milked the moment that would make the show's all-time highlight reel. And if Johnny felt like playing "Stump the Band" with audience members, you'd get on national television. We would stand right behind Carson, ready to hand him the winning prizes should anyone stump Doc Severinsen's band, which was often. We got on camera in those moments of the prize exchange. To impress on you the enormity of television's reach with just one single impression, a girl from Oklahoma wrote the page staff and asked if I was single! Another, who actually lived in New York City, left a message with her phone number at NBC's Guest Relations department! (Yes, we went out.)

But at this time that was almost 30 years ago, and it had been more than 20 years since Dennis and I had been in touch, as respective career paths, geographic relocations, and raising young families unintentionally but mutually stole the attention of our deep friendship.

I kept staring at the publication, thinking any minute the page in front of me would blur and the names on it would change back to the real credits of other unknown people. I couldn’t help but match the similarities of the magazine with the slew of print pieces and brochures I’d written for ad clients for 13 years. I could do this! I thought. I couldn’t wait for the next day to try and reconnect with Dennis.

Indeed, I did reconnect with my old friend. That very week I was given my first assignment from PTP: to edit the 1992 Atlanta Braves yearbook! It would be a spring release following their World Series triumph the previous fall. I would compile and edit five more yearbooks for NFL teams before August of that same year (Atlanta, Indianapolis, Miami, Cleveland, Tampa Bay).

That fateful reconnection via a program at a football stadium opened the door to a 25-year career and counting in the publications field as an editor and nationally published football writer and author of 29 books on sports history. The compendium of articles—for The Sporting News Pro Football Special Collectors Editions, NFL.com, Lindy’s Pro Football annual (21 years), Athlon Sports, the Pro Football Hall of Fame annual yearbook, plus feature stories for NFL team media guides and publications (Cleveland, Arizona, San Diego, NFL Properties)—slowly established my legitimacy with history-related sports articles. When I began writing, I remember consciously wanting to create a niche for myself that would be less competitive than the logjam of writers attacking current modern-day sports. I found that niche in pro football’s history.

Just a handful of the big names I’ve interviewed for feature stories include Sammy Baugh, Otto Graham, Arnold Palmer, Ernie Banks, Michael Phelps, A.J. Foyt, Bob Feller, Sid Luckman, George Foreman, Richard Petty, and Don Larsen. They are 11 of the more than 500 interviews I’ve conducted that include 73 pro football Hall of Famers and more than 300 total former NFL players.

One of my favorites was getting to talk at length with a forgotten NFL superstar of the late 1930s and early ’40s, Gaynell Tinsley, a former Chicago Cardinals end who in successive years twice set the NFL record for longest touchdown pass reception. But his name is not spoken among the all-time NFL greats because he’s not in the Hall of Fame. Tinsley played just three NFL seasons—hardly enough to be given serious consideration by the Seniors Committee that selects the older-era Hall candidates for nomination.

Tinsley—a legend at LSU too, first as a player then as a head coach—wonderfully reconstructed the big NFL marks he set on his 97- and 98-yard pass receptions, both recorded in the season finales of 1937 and ’38, recalling even icy patches of his race down the sideline on the 97-yarder that fell in the shady part of Comiskey Park. It was a great oral history to take down, which was used for a feature story in the Arizona Cardinals 2002 Media Guide. I particularly treasure that interview because, when I spoke with him, Tinsley, 87, was soon to pass away. I was likely the last person to interview him for publication before he died. The same with General Alexander Haig (interviewed for the in-progress football tome, World War Football: The winding gridiron mosaic of WWII, an oral history). He died suddenly not maybe a month or two after our interview. And since Haig was by then long removed from public life, it’s likely I was the last to interview him as well.

POET WARRIOR

The same year that I hung up chauffeur work for editing sports publications I also recorded my first full album, Poet Warrior, produced by Mark Morris and Peter Olach. It featured 10 originals that wound up being among my most popular work over the years: “Late Bloomer,” “Dolphin in the Nets, “My Father’s Eye,” and “Arizona Highways” among them. Later, two additional songs were included, “Golden Acre, Goodnight”—the love tribute to the dear octogenarian who once grew the No. 1 Victory Garden in America in 1945—plus the absurdly weird but historically important “Rappin’ Eef,” my cross-cultural bastardization but preservation nonetheless of the vanishing art form of eefing, taught to me by the master eefer himself, Jimmy Riddle of Hee-Haw fame.

I was blessed to have Mark’s percussion wizardry along with fretless-bass maestro Don Kerce accompanying me. We did all the recording on Pete’s little eight-track at his West Nashville house.

That was a major transitional year.

The album kicked off a 25-year career as a soloist, after past musical incarnations as part of a duet and trio. Scorpius Risin’, a ten-year compendium of studio recordings from 1988 through 1997, followed. The project included much of Scott Jarrett’s production on pieces like the title cut, the original first recording of “Fond du Lac,” and “Old Romantic.”

Scott played a double-time ukulele to brighten up the opening of “Simpatico” and added a “snaky” (Scott’s word) electric guitar part on “It’s Not That Bad,” tastefully played by Mikey Wright when we recorded at Thunderbird Recording out in Tijeras, New Mexico, in the spring of 1995.

There are a couple of songs inspired by my wife on there too, including the original vows I sang to her at our wedding, now put to music (“The Ring”). Several years after our union in 1995, I sent a copy of “The Ring” to my cousin in Connecticut when his daughter was getting married. He called me post haste to pay the highest compliment—they were now working the song into her wedding!

ENTER BC

The song also officially marked the debut of the artful playing, engineering, and co-production of Bryan Cumming, the longtime versatile Nashville session player, kicking off our on-going 20-year association in the studio. Bryan and I work like one. His energy, as anyone knows who has worked with him, is boundless and infectious. Every session we’ve ever worked on has been an upper.

We hit full stride in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when I first began to musically explore my native Scottish roots. The seven-song Scottish Influence album (2003) was the result, my initial look into Scottish history as a songwriter, which included my first song in the Celtic direction, “My Father’s Eye.”

Two versions of that tribute to my Scottish-born dad, the aforementioned Alexander Sharpe Ross, have been recorded—the first on 1992’s Poet Warrior; the second with Cumming on Scottish Influence. No song I’ve ever written has personally affected me more.

That tune opened the floodgates for a prolific 15-year Scottish songwriting period and was immediately followed by “On the Hill,” part of the four-song series recorded with Scott Jarrett out in New Mexico in ’95. Another song on Scottish Influence, “Bell Rock Light,” a harrowing tale of Scotland’s legendary wave-washed lighthouse, catapulted me into the New Folk finals at the prominent Kerrville (TX) Folk Festival in 1999, where, as one of 32 finalists chosen nationwide from over 700 applicants, I debuted “Bell Rock Light.” In the summer of 2003, with the release of Scottish Influence, that song went No. 1 for two successive rating periods on the Redondo Beach, Calif., Internet radio station Coverunner Radio.

But the recording generating the most attention from that album was the anthemic “Raise the Clans!” a romp through the Scottish ages, highlighted by the calling of the Highlander rolls. At Bryan’s suggestion, we belted out the “heathen clan drums” sound on a pair of empty 5-gallon hard plastic water jugs. The storm sounds, winding flute opening, heathen clan drums, uilleann pipes, and later, the electric guitars—all meshed beautifully to create the alternating nostalgic/driving tone of the piece.

BRANDING ONESELF

Five of my six albums (excluding the Pam & Alan Ross – Master Sessions double CD) are released under the name “wm Alan Ross.” Earlier there were variations using the full name, William Alan Ross, and earlier still, simply going with the lifelong-used Alan Ross.

But the Internet changed all that. For my books and career-long magazine byline credits, I have used my regular name, and I dare say, quickly gotten lost in the global shuffle of a bazillion other Alan Rosses.

In fact, the current first three pages of listings on Amazon of “books written by Alan Ross” reveals no less than nine other book authors also named Alan Ross, some with spelling variations. On LinkedIn, there are 449 professionals named Alan Ross.

One doppelganger-in-name popping up from time to time is the 1970s’ British rocker. He once had a full-page ad in Billboard, with the headline: “This is Alan Ross.” Over the years, since the mid-’70s, I’ve fielded more than a few email and website inquires asking if I’m the UK guitarist Alan Ross. The name game can virtually erase a lifetime of meaningful achievement, if one’s luminescence is less than the namesake’s. My father’s substantial recognition in art has been almost completely eclipsed by a comic book artist by the same name of Alex Ross. But since he gained fame in the digital age, the comic illustrator’s coverage on the Internet dwarfs the results shown for my dad.

With the books and magazine publishing world having swallowed my everyday name whole, I decided a different positioning tactic with my music was necessary. Contracting the seldom-used first name, William—going with “wm” and lowercasing it to deemphasize it even more—did the trick. Not many wm Alan Rosses on the Internet.

The end result? No one who has known me forever as Alan knows how to search for me!  Bwahahaha!

COVER STORIES

Three years before the arrival of Scottish Influence, my writing career, already launched through the pro football articles, received an unexpected boost when the national weekly supplement American Profile began assigning me. For 12 years, on more than 40 cover stories—ranging from spending a night in a Rhode Island lighthouse to covering an Indian trading post in Monument Valley to witnessing a vintage 1860s-reenactment “base ball” team in Ludington, Michigan—my byline went before 10 million weekly readers, as American Profile grew to become the fourth largest weekly magazine in North America.

I got to travel the country to special spots and tiny towns that were the focus of the magazine: a renovated old-timey movie theatre in Graham, Texas; Norman Rockwell’s studio in Stockbridge, Massachusetts; Pearl Fryar’s exquisite topiary in Bishopville, South Carolina. Two years following my first cover story, I became one of the magazine’s regional editors and, later, a contributing editor. It was a writer’s delight and a traveler’s treat.

Coinciding with my early years with American Profile, I began an association with Nashville publisher Cumberland House, for whom I would eventually write 23 books, including the positive-themed Away from the Ball, which looks at the good and often heroic deeds that NFL players do off the field.

I especially enjoyed editing and compiling the quote book series, of which we did 20—team histories told through quotes compiled on three NFL teams, eight Major League Baseball teams, six college football teams, two college basketball teams, and one NBA team. The college books, eight total, were penned under the pseudonym Wilton Sharpe.

Ron Pitkin (Cumberland House president) picked up the scent after I’d had my first nine books published by Walnut Grove Press. Criswell Freeman had given me a wonderful opportunity to express my sports passion with the original sports quote book series we did for WGP. But of those nine, my favorite beyond a doubt was not any of the sports books but one I got to research, write, and compile about lighthouses (The Lure of Lighthouses). That was heaven.

Ron, though, really saved my ass. In 2003, Caroline and I had moved out to Bisbee, Arizona, and I thought my experienced freelance writing skills would hold me in good stead. But the geographic and cultural shift out there only put me at the end of the line of people the editors were already familiar with. Then one day, three years after the release of my first book for Cumberland House (The Yankees Century), Ron called from out of the blue and asked the improbable:

“Would you like to do a book on the Red Sox?”

How does a lifelong Yankees fan who’d just written a book on his beloved Bombers suddenly turn coat and write a book about the contemptible rival? Armed with that conflicted conundrum but ever the soldier of fortune, I didn’t hesitate to tell my publisher, “I’d love to do a book on the Red Sox!’”

The Red Sox Century sold close to 15,000 copies, and it wasn’t long before Ron offered me an eight-book deal, which turned into an additional 15-book deal. Like my old pal Robbie Dupree says, “I Got Lucky.”

COOL DOWN

It was a fun eight-year run, but at Christmastime 2008, Pitkin, whose accountant told him his love for books ran too far ahead of his business acumen, had to shutter Cumberland House.

Fortunately, two years prior to that time, I had been contacted by American Profile, who had previously thrown me several NASCAR cover stories, to see if I had an interest in writing a weekly NASCAR column for the magazine’s Hometown Content package that was placed with many of the more than 1,000 newspapers nationwide that carry American Profile. The company paid the contributors but gave it away free to its clients.

Thus, “The Cool Down Lap” was born, running for seven years and joined in 2008 by an additional weekly pro football column, “Over the Ball.” Both columns were in effect syndicated around the country, and the job became a Sunday marathon ritual. I’d watch as many as three major auto races (the racing column grew to also include the F1 and IndyCar series) and, during football season, two or three games on TV, before settling down usually around 11 p.m. to begin writing both columns—a long 16-hour day.

I loved being in touch with my two favorite sports so regularly. It was tough covering NASCAR at first, since I grew up exposed to and loving Formula One. But I came to appreciate the sport I once referred to as “Sherman tanks running in a circle.” Usually disdain divides stock car and F1 fans, but I learned the beauty of both racing series because I was deeply exposed to both through work.

THE FOGS

It’s only fitting that this bio end the way it began, with music.

Ten long years had passed since the release of my last previous album, in 2003. Recording was piecemeal, having moved to Arizona that same year—a three-year stretch that lay mute recording-wise. It was a joyful reunion with Bryan in 2007, when I returned to Tennessee and again picked up my plan to put out a second album of original Celtic material. The new album, a 10-song collection with eight original pieces titled Fogs of August, was released in August 2013 at the pastoral Amber Falls Winery in Hampshire, Tenn. The album, like its predecessor, Scottish Influence, dug deep into Scottish history, uncovering compelling themes.

Strong women of character have dotted Scottish history. Both Violetta Lyon and Lady Anne MacIntosh were incredible paragons in their time. Violetta, a member of the 15th-century House of Glamis, became renowned far and wide as an exceptional huntress and killer of wolves (“Highlander Girl”), an enviable reputation gained by a member of the so-called weaker sex that would have made feminists proud more than 500 years ago. And the Lady MacIntosh opposed her British Redcoat captain/husband during the Risin’ of the ’45 and stowed away the young Scottish renegade leader, the legendary Bonnie Prince Charlie, in the couple’s own home, suffering a prison stretch for her impudence rather than casting her lot with the Redcoats. The Prince’s rebel troops thought so highly of her anti-Hanoverian stance that they nicknamed her “Colonel Anne.” That lead cut on the album went on to be named a 2017 Best Celtic Song finalist in the Just Plain Folks Music Awards competition, selected from 240,000 entries submitted over the years 2010-2016. Just Plain Folks is the world's largest grassroots music organization.

As a fitting finale, I covered Robert Burns’ ageless “Auld Lang Syne,” named a finalist in the 2013 Celtic Radio Music Awards.

The year 2015 concluded my 50th year professionally in music, and I continue to record, now three quarters of the way through a scheduled four-song EP that reexplores my early pop and folk roots. The collection—titled Little by Little—is scheduled for release in late 2017.

PLACE

I remember my mother once saying that every time my dad finished a piece of art or an illustration for sale, he was out of work until the next job came along. From my vantage point, it seemed that some unseen force, God, or universe always seemed to supply him with that next job…and the next…and the one after that. The inevitable connection of the myriad and winding dots that have linked my own life, leave no doubt that something is at work there too.

I think of how many people planetwide are part of similarly miraculous but mostly anonymous life unfoldments, all of us unconsciously weaving the Great Tapestry thread by thread.