Mike's first band started in 1961, when his brother brought home a battered Harmony acoustic guitar he'd found in an alley.  Three high school classmates got together and formed a group.  Mike had the only instrument, but being in the church choir, the band sang four-part harmony.  They played Kingston Trio and Brothers Four songs.  They wore nearly-identical striped cardigan sweaters, and called themselves The Sweatermen.  They were the hottest thing to hit Bloomington High School (Illinois) that year.

A couple years later, Mike moved up a notch and played some in a group with a stand-up bass, banjo, and another guitar -- The Hydraulic Banana Singers.  He remembers singing "John Henry," and "Don't Jump Off Of The Roof, Dad."

A turning point in Mike's musical career came when his father gave him a new Gibson LG1 acoustic guitar for high school graduation.  It was way easier to play than the Harmony.  The next year, in college, Mike sang with his good friend Dick Maiman on campus and at a coffeehouse in Highwood, Ill., called The Sound.  Once they shared a stage with then-unknown-now-folk-legend Fred Holstein.  They sang Ian and Sylvia songs, and Simon and Garfunkel.

Also in college, Mike played with the TKE fraternity group The Bent Fork Five Plus Two, an ensemble featuring a gut-bucket and jug in addition to Mike's guitar and Tom Davies' Ode banjo.  Mike's favorite song from that era was one he learned from Todd McNutt: "Halitosis Beats No Breath At All."  Finally, in college, Mike became friends with J. Michael Wilhelm, who was basically the poet laureate of Lake Forest College in the mid-60s.  Mike played publicly many times with Wilhelm, who sang exclusively his own compositions, a la the latest campus rage, Bob Dylan.  One of Wilhelm's tunes and some lyrics made it onto "Walkin' the Windy High Wire," nearly thirty years after they were written.

Then came the lean years.  Mike strummed away, but got no better.  He once sang at an open mic at Trout Fishing in America in Cambridge in 1969, but basically didn't play until he went to Europe and Central Asia with his first wife in 1972.  In Italy he wrote several songs, one of which may appear on his next CD.  On returning to the States and Western Massachusetts in 1973-74, he wrote another song or two. 

It wasn't until the mid-80s, after completing an MFA in poetry at UMass, Amherst, that the songs began to flow.  He hooked up with Lin Boehmer, formerly of Small Change, and formed The Ozone Cookies, which performed some John Prine, Dr. Hook, and Jimmy Buffet in addition to Mike's own songs.  Then in 1989 Mike joined -- and subsequently named -- The Grownups, whose first gig ever was at the 20th anniversary of Woodstock, at Max Yasgur's farm.  Things were starting to roll.

Enter the new millennium.  Mike began recording his CD in July 2001, in Joe Lada's home studio (Joe records and performs his own music as Bobby Darling).  Some 21 months later (way longer than Mike had expected), the CD was released.  As word got out that Mike was going to try touring in support of the CD, musicians began to climb on board.  Ruth Sterling was always part of the show, of course.  But then rock-solid bass player Carolyn Bailey signed on.  Next, in quick succession, extraordinary drummer Mike Rose (The Hilltones) and lightning-fingered lead guitarist Roland LaPierre (The Hilltones and The Rewinders) joined the traveling team.  Finally, and unexpectedly, came teen-aged fiddle phenom Kelly Halloran.  The band's first gig, absent Roland and Kelly, was in August, 2002 -- a benefit for the Plainfield, Mass., town playground.  The next gig, with the full band, was an opener for Scott Alarik and Laura Wood at All Souls Church, Greenfield, Mass., March 15, 2003.  Two Saturdays later, the band rocked the house -- over 100 frenzied fans -- at Mike's CD release party at the Buckland Public Hall, Buckland, Mass.