A native of Kansas, my musical life began with piano lessons when I was a wee lad knee-high to a grasshopper.  I took up the trumpet in the 5th grade and switched to euphonium in junior high.  High school and I were not on the same wavelength, and my friends and I soon started a rock and roll garage band in the early 1970s.  I first heard the intriguing sound of bluegrass music at a commune in western New York in 1975.  This led me to the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, Kansas where I first heard the music of the Irish group “De Danann” and was smitten by the sound of Irish traditional music.  After a rather curious career in the building trades, I traveled to St. John’s, Newfoundland to study folklore in the mid-90s, where I was infected by the sense of place and folk traditions of “The Rock.”  A couple of excursions to France brought me into contact with Breton and French folk music, and an appearance on a French radio program helped boost my musical confidence.  All of this, I felt, I should try to share with my fellow Kansans, being cursed, as it were, by the notion of "grow where you're planted."  I should add that Native American worldviews have also had a profound impact on the way I see the world.

For over ten years, our band Rowan has been bringing the sound of Celtic and other European folk traditions to the central U.S.  We perform at festivals, house concerts, coffeehouses, pubs, schools, parties -- about anywhere, I guess.

I have played four of the last five years at the Kansas City Renaissance Festival as street minstrel "Dughie [pronounce Doogie] Herve" (pronounced Hair-vay -- it's been an issue).  Even though I fail the qualifications of a die-hard "Rennie," these people have been extremely kind to me and it's easily the best place I've ever worked. 

I have a Ph.D. in history from the University of Kansas, where I studied the relationship between theater and empire in the colonial, early republic, and antebellum periods of U.S. history.  I'm currently working on a book on theater and empire from Quebec to Kansas in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.  I have an M.A. in history from Wichita State University, where I studied the environmental history of the central plains.  And my B.A. is from Missouri State University in Springfield, where I majored in history and music.  Nowadays, I teach U.S. history at Johnson County Community College (suburban KC) and at Kansas University Continuing Education.  In the spring of 2009, I taught one semester full-time at Fort Hays State University in Hays, KS -- the sun, wind, sky, and grass are intoxicating.