Singer/Songwriter/Guitarist out of Cincinnati, Ohio Portland, Oregon.

I began playing guitar as a freshman at Denison University. My roomate, Pete Allen, founder of guitartabs.com, had a guitar and showed me the basic chords. After that, he usually had to ask me to stop playing if he felt like playing.

One of the first songs I wrote was "This World." I wrote it after my eyes were opened to a little reality in a class I took on poverty. I played it at the professor's house for an end of the year get together. After I played, she started talking about all these artists that I had never heard of; she looked at me like I grew up under a rock. I never really listened to music during highschool --- just taped a couple songs off the radio. I had purchased one tape and one cd in my life. When I replied that I had never heard of Stevie Ray Vaughan, she really gave me a twisted look and we planned to have "music education" the next semester. Music education consisted of me coming to her office every week or two and borrowing about four CDs, listening to them for however long, then coming back to talk them over and make the exchange. I really got into some of the older acoustic bluesy stuff she had. She helped me get to know the likes of Mississippi John Hurt and Lightning Hopkins. I love that stuff.

In the past couple years, with the aid of friends and random people, I've found artists like Ben Harper, Ani Difranco, Kaki King, and Peter Mulvey, whom I can't get enough of and am influenced by. I started writing songs when I started playing; words about everything just kept coming out of my mouth, and I eventually grabbed a notebook.

I've been doing open mics/jams for about a year and have recently started booking gigs for solo and duo sets. I LOVE to play, and when other people start feeling and getting into my music, it's a living dream for me. See you in my dreams.

- tarvis (tarvis@tarvis.org)