I am both a musician and a storyteller and interweave songs,tunes and tales into all my programs.

I believe in audience participation and community celebrations and think of myself as a creative facilitator as well as a performer. I tell traditional and personal stories from my Celtic-American heritage and play the Scottish bagpipe, fiddle, banjo and guitar. 
 
 

I began my storytelling and instrument playing at a young age. When I was two-and-a-half I told my first story, my version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. When I was five, my sister and I made bagpipes out of balloons and tinker toys but it wasn't until I was thirteen that I officially began learning to pipe. I attended Donald Lindsay's Invermark College of Piping in upstate New York for a number of summers during my teens. Since then I've opened festivals, piped at funerals, weddings, birthday parties and graduations, given lessons to beginners and continued to attend bagpipe summer schools whenever I can. 
 
 

I fell in love with the fiddle, and with the fiddle player, when I was eight. Michael Gorman, from county Sligo Ireland, was eighty years old when he was a house guest of my parents for two weeks, and started me on my fiddler's path. 
 
 
 

I began giving fiddle lessons at age thirteen and in my twenties took the Suzuki Book 1a teachers training. I quickly realized fiddling and violin training are worlds apart from the very beginning so didn't continue with Suzuki Teacher Training. However, I've taught fiddle and folk dancing as an enrichment teacher at many Suzuki Institutes across the country since 1986, including Institutes in IL, UT, PA, NH, MA, VA, KS and CO. 
 
 

I attended Berea College in Kentucky from 1975 to 1977 and played fiddle for the Berea College Country Dancers. 
 
 

I've given fiddle workshops and singing games/dancing workshops at Berea Christmas School, John C. Campbell Folk School, Pinewoods, Augusta Heritage Arts Workshops, Buffalo Gap Family Camp, and Maine Fiddle Camp.
 
 
 

I moved with my daughters (Georgia Rose and Suzannah Park) from Swannanoa, NC back to Chicago in 1984. I worked for Urban Gateways (an Arts in Education agency) for about five years and then became my own booking agent. My daughters and I moved to Jamaica Plain, MA in 1997 and then in the Summer of 2000 I moved to Belfast, Maine.
 

I married Meg Peterson in 2007 and here we are playing a celebratory Wedding fanfare on pipes and drums!  Meg and I plan to roost here on our Gypsy Rose Farm for a long time.

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