Celebrating 25 years in music!

25 years ago last Friday I was working at a shitty job where I was the whipping boy...the only male on an all female crew at UCSC in Santa Cruz CA. They called us "maintenance", but we were actually maids. That very morning I had cleaned puke off a toilet left by some cheerleader who was attending camp there. 

Every day at noon the girls would hide in a little broom closet and watch "Days of our Lives" for an hour even though the lunch break was supposed to be only 30 minutes long. Every day at 12:50 PM I would come back from lunch and get yelled at by the head bitch for being late even though they were all still watching a soap opera in a broom closet. This went on every day to the point of hilarity. 

Until that Friday, 25 years ago, when I went home for lunch got a message from Andy Santana that he needed a guitar player at the Seabright Brewery happy hour at 4:30. If I went back to work I would have had to stay until 5:00. I did the gig instead. A month later The Soul Drivers were working 5 nights a week. I was making $50 per night and my rent was $220 per month. I was shitting in tall cotton...

It's 25 years later now...and being the whipping boy on that crew is still the last day job I have ever had. I must be the luckiest man on the planet. Those of you who get up every morning and work every day 9-5, or more, have my utmost respect. That is REALLY HARD!

Thank you Andy for the call that day. Thank you Albert Collins...the first note I heard you play I knew my life was gonna be different. Thank you to all the great and wonderful people who have payed me to play music, shared stages with me or otherwise helped make my career possible...thank you fans, friends, club owners, festival promoters, record producers, DJs, CDBaby, BMI, SoundExchange, Marcia Ball, Elvin Bishop, Angela Strehli, Maria Muldaur,Charlie Musselwhite, Tommy Castro, Austin DeLone, Howard Tate, ShanaMorrison, Mark Hays, John Nemeth, Terry Hanck, Sista Monica C. Parker,Lara Price, Will Porter, Randy Chortkoff, Mike Phillips...thank you Steve Ehrmann, Paul Revelli, Dale Ockerman, June Core, Dennis Murphy, Dennis Dove...Bonnie Raitt, Nappy Brown, Jimmy Rogers, Luther Tucker, Billy Boy Arnold, Dave Myers, Snooky Pryor, Earl King, Pinetop Perkins, Willie Big Eyes Smith, Hubert Sumlin...I know I'm forgetting someone...a bunch of someone's...

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