In the late 70’s and early 80’s I started playing out solo around the Mid­-Hudson Valley area in New York as an acoustic act. At that point I had started writing songs and mixed originals with many of the popular acoustic rock songs of that time.

Before really going too far as a solo act however I formed a band with a high school classmate called Current Events that we then transformed into another band called Yap Yap Research and the two of us decided to move to New York City area. YYR was an all original band with socio­-political focused songs. We played around the NYC area for about a year, ­ playing CBGB’s a half dozen times as well as Guildersleeves, Zappa’s and other area clubs.

During this time I wrote songs of all types: ­ folk, rock, country, punk etc, ­ whatever came my way – ­ though we only used a certain type for YYR. After about a year and just after recording three songs in a NYC studio in late 1982, my high school mate decided he wanted to rock to a different beat and YYR dissolved – ­ along with my desire to continue any type of pursuit for success in the music business.

For the next 30 years, except for playing for various dogs we had through the years ­ always – an awesome audience ­ – and an occasional family sing­-a­-long, my music sat idly by.

Then in 2012, having been living in the Columbus, OH area for for over a dozen years, I stumbled upon an acoustic jam group led by John Morgan (morganguitar.com). They met twice a week with well defined lists and documented songs. I couldn’t get enough of it!  After about a year John offered he needed to take a break from the two­-a­-week routine and asked if I would take over Saturday jams ­ – which I did for about a year. Then in the summer of 2014 a family business opportunity moved me back to the East Coast to the Danbury, CT area.

After just a few weeks I realized I missed the weekly jam and decided to start a jam group using Meetup.com. Our first jam was in September of 2014 ­  – and one the five people that showed up was Marian.

Fast forward another a year, with the Jam growing and realizing some common musical interests, I asked Marian if she’d be interested in doing a little more music outside of the jam.

With music prominently back in my life from the jams, the new original songs started to appear again, I was looking for an outlet for some of them as well as some older tunes I had. This led to recording sessions at our two houses and then to the formation of Long Time Friend and the release of our CD – Move On Over.

I spent some years playing with bands in Dublin Ireland where I grew up before leaving for the U.S. in 1980. Music has always been a big part of my life having been born into a big musical family. I gave up performing to run a business and raise a family but at this point in my life now I’m happy to be able to dedicate more time to music.

I met Neil after attending his music meet-up group and was impressed by some of his original songs. He invited me to work on developing them and this CD – Move On Over –  is a result of a musically creative and fun time we’ve spent recording them over the last year.