Music found me early.

My older siblings filled our house with the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and the great records of the ’60s and early ’70s. At seven, I started playing drums, taking lessons from Cliff Payne—a great drummer in my hometown and a friend of my older sister.

In junior high, I joined the concert band. The director chose the trombone for me. I wanted to learn to read music, but the trombone never quite called my name. Of seven trombone players, I started in third chair and worked my way down to sixth. Let’s just say I wasn’t a natural. But I learned to read music, and my love for it kept growing.

For my fourteenth birthday, my grandmother on my mother’s side bought me a guitar. That gift changed my life. I began taking lessons from Tommy Dawson, whose encouragement and example inspired me. Tommy later left to pursue a career in music. Today, he’s a singer-songwriter in Maryland, known as T. Edwin Doss.

As I learned to play, I wanted to share the experience. And honestly, my family didn’t have much money, so teaching guitar was also a way to earn some. I taught from the time I was fifteen until I left my hometown at twenty-five. I’m proud to have helped some very good musicians get their start—or at least given them a foundation they could build on.

At twenty-five, I moved to Florida for a performing residency at Pineapple Willy’s in Panama City Beach. I didn’t know it then, but that move would be permanent. Panama City Beach and Panama City have been home ever since.

To this day, the lessons I learned playing gigs guide the way I do business: practice, rehearse, be ready, and put your audience first.

And whatever happens, the show must go on.