I often tell people that I grew up on Sheep Island, just off Cundys Harbor, but spent the school year in Washington, DC. That pretty well sums up the way I have always felt about the coast of Maine, and explains a lot about why my wife and I now live in Bath! Aside from messing around in boats on the waters of Casco Bay, my early years were filled with music. My mother was an accomplished pianist, and my father a concert cellist. I often went to sleep at night listening to them playing wonderful works by Bach, Mozart, Chopin and Beethoven. All of my siblings played various instruments, and I, the youngest of five, started piano lessons at the age of four, began singing in the choir of the Washington National Cathedral when I was eight, and got my first guitar (along with 7 years of classical guitar lessons) at the age of nine. Within a year I had formed a folk group with a fellow choirboy, and by the 7th grade had formed my first rock band, Peter and the Wolves. At eighteen I started performing professionally with Claude Jones, a DC rock band I formed with classmates from St. Johns College in Annapolis. (Music and photos from those heady days are available at www.claudejonesarchive.org)

When I was twenty I went on to study and teach yoga and meditation and spent seventeen years as a member of the American Sikh community. During that time I ran several businesses, including the Golden Temple Conscious Cookery in Washington, DC and an advertising agency in Los Angeles. I also founded and toured with the Khalsa String Band, playing “spiritual fold rock” for audiences all over North America. (I still get requests for the two albums we recorded, though they are long out of print). After leaving the Sikh community in 1987 I spent several years developing real estate in California and New Mexico, then went on to do consulting work in energy efficiency for the State Energy Office of New Mexico and the US Department of Energy. Unsatisfied with the DOE’s new “supply-side” priorities and with the political direction of the country in 2001, I went back to graduate school in 2002, receiving a Masters Degree in Environmental Studies in 2004 from Antioch University New England in Keene, NH. I then served for two years as Executive Director of the New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution (Brattleboro, VT) and another two years as Executive Director of the Biodiversity Project (Madison, WI) where I worked closely on the campaign to restore the Great Lakes.

In 2008 Johannah and I moved to Portland and I began consulting with the Gulf of Maine Council and the Maine Coastal Program. Since then I have led the New England Coasts Restoration Initiative in creating a $20 billion needs assessment for ecosystem restoration in ME, NH, MA & RI, modeled after the hugely successful Great Lakes Restoration Strategy (see WWW.NORTHEASTGREATWATERS.ORG). I also serve as board president of Maine Songwriters Association (www.mainesongwriters.com), where I take great pleasure in helping other aspiring songwriters with their craft and their musical careers.