In the summer of 1997, I met Maryline in San Antonio, TX. She had made the journey from France to visit a close friend, and found herself at a Seven Mary Three show after hearing "Cumbersome” on the radio. A long distance love story began. I left Seven Mary Three in 1999 and set out to re-discover myself as a songwriter. Living in France, armed with a 4-track recorder, a microphone, and a guitar, I began writing lyrics and teaching myself to sing. After moving to Charlottesville, VA, I began to record a few songs in the home studios of various friends, growing progressively more comfortable with my voice and my songwriting. In 2007, Maryline and I began working on a series of albums, the first titled Last Tender Leaves and the second titled Pardon The Witches. I bought some equipment from friends and from strangers on the Internet, and we started recording the two albums in our basement. Pardon The Witches is the emotional rock bottom that I thought I was hitting with Last Tender Leaves. Lyrically, the songs are about the levels that one sinks, or rises to when she/he finally realizes that something beautiful in their lives has been replaced by its memory. Musically, they are deceptively simple melodies with sparse arrangements, built around the classic skeleton of American rock music- drums, bass, acoustic guitar, electric guitar and keys/organs. I would describe Last Tender Leaves and Pardon The Witches as empty rooms inside broken homes, love's lost light, a holiday beach in the heart of winter, revenge, regret, quiet desperation, a honeymoon barrel going over the falls. In the spring of 2009, we began work on our third album, "Wine Diamonds." This album was recorded with a drummer (Nathan West) and a bass player (David Bartok). We recorded the songs live in Bobby Read's Small World Studio in one day, and added overdubs later in our basement. Wine Diamonds are the crystals that are sometimes found at the end of a bottle-getting to the bottom of that emotional state has given us a greater desire to drink deeply.