Bio
READ on if you feel like....

I love this picture, even though I can't really remember this all all. I'm the little boy in the striped t-shirt on the far right, kind of shyly there behind my father. We are on the Empress of England traveling from Liverpool to Montreal. My older brother (by one year) is to my right then my Mother, my big brother the tallest one in the center (he stayed in England) and our Au Pair Girl (who came to Canada with us). On the left are my Aunt and my cousins (they weren't on our voyage, just for the picture) My sister isn't in the picture.
Here's the story, we are at Liverpool about to embark at a very posh restaurant (according to my big brother)
Waiter: 'and you sir what would you like with your chips?' (translated French fries)
Me: 'Ketchup'
This hasn't changed.
But there's a miracle or maybe more of the mystical power of fate that changes our personal histories and futures-how things happen, why they happen. But here's my father a Jewish-German immigrant who landed in England in the early 1930's, and my mother daughter of Estonian immigrants, living in Hull, living through wartime England, but they wouldn't meet until the 1950's.


I digress for a second, what a wonderful time this was recently at POWERSTATION in NYC with this group of awesome singers putting together the HUMBUG album. This show has been around for a while, and had its first incarnation in 1998 at the Lamb's Theater. The awesome fellow on the far left in a red shirt is Carl Danielsen, and he music directed that Lamb's performance ( I was the VERY reluctant conductor)
(Side bar:Not many people know this, but I have suffered panic attacks my whole life, and the thought of having an attack during conducting the show caused crazy anxiety)
Anyway, also in this picture is Chris Gilroy, engineer, at the back 2nd from the right. He went on tour with HUMBUG back in it's touring days, and that was I think he told me that tour was his first pro NY gig.
Digression over....