My first recording gig was at the age of 20, when I wrote a few songs for a soundtrack to a movie my mom was producing at the time, called "Ginger in the Morning" starring Sissy Spacek. My songs didn’t get chosen for the soundtrack but there was no doubt I’d swallowed the bug, and I loved the recording studio. I knew then and there that I’d be singing and involved in music and entertainment for the rest of my life.

I started singing publicly in my twenties. The style was long denim skirts, and it was a good thing because my knees used to shake so bad when I got on stage that only the skirt could hide it.

By the time I was in my first real band, I was living in Boulder, Colorado, and it was quite a heyday in the local music scene there. Crosby, Stills and Nash, Poco, Firefall, The Astronauts, Navarro and Zephyr were just some of the bands whose members lived nearby and were playing in the same places we were. I worked at Nick The Greek’s Music Store, which was an old Safeway Grocery Store. I worked with Jock Bartley and Tommy Bolin. On any given you’d find Joe Walsh or Steven Stills hanging out while Firefall would be rehearsing in the old renovated meat cooler in the back.

Triad, my hippie folk trio with Dave Hicks and John Daspit

I was in a band back then called Fat Shadow. The cute guitar player was this guy named Bradley Kopp, monster player even back then, who would bring me back down to Texas — to Austin — almost thirty years later. Back then he was one of my best friends who was there for me during one of the roughest times in my life.