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John is a husband, a father, an educator, and a consummate student of life.  He has taken the inspiration and tragedy that life has had to offer and melded them into a gift for all of us.  His music is offered without expectation, but often met with surprise at the scope of his expression.

Born in Georgia, John excelled as a star athlete and musician during his high school years.  John spent his summers playing bass guitar and piano in various bands throughout the southeast.  Eventually, he caught the attention of record producer Quinn Ivy, who signed John to a recording contract with a subsidiary of Atlantic Records in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. 

Quinn Ivy had already produced such hits as Percy Sledge's "When a Man Loves a Woman", so at age eighteen, John gave up his sport's scholarship to pursue a professional career in music.

You may remember Alabama Governor George C. Wallace, who also ran for president numerous times.  While attending high school in Montgomery, Alabama, John met George Wallace Jr. and had the opportunity to play in a band with George, Jr. at his father's presidential rallies.  George C. Wallace held the governorship for a very long time, a feat achieved by having his wife, Lurleen, run for office in between his consecutive terms.  Lurleen was elected in 1966 but her campaign took it's toll on her health and she passed away in June 1968, one month after the assassination of Martin Luther King and one month before the assassination of Robert Kennedy.
 

John had spent many days and nights practicing and mingling with the Wallace's at the governor's mansion.  While Lurleen was being treated for her cancer, she would often call the boys while they were rehearsing, place the phone by her hospital bed, and enjoy their music until she fell asleep.  Interestingly, George C. Wallace also became a victim of an assassination attempt during the 1972 Presidential Primaries, an act which left him permanently paralyzed from the waist down.

Before graduating from music studies at Auburn University and the University of Alabama, John's travels took him to Muscle Shoals, Alabama where he used his talent on the bass guitar as a studio session player.  John was then off to Nashville, Tennessee where John worked as a sideman, booking agent, and jingle writer.  During his professional career John also appeared in television commercials, appeared as a movie extra, and as a special performer on Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Club.

John has performed with members of Jefferson Starship, Styx, Hot Tuna, Ted Nugent, Roy Orbison, Buck Owens, Waylon Jennings, Brenda Lee, Frank Sinatra, Jr., B.J. Thomas, Stevie Wonder, Steve Earle, Bobby Goldsboro, Elvin Bishop, Al DiMeola, Steppenwolf, Hank Williams, Jr., Lee Greenwood, Marshall Chapman, and T.G. Sheppard.

A professional career that's spanned over two decades has taken John from sideman, session player and band leader, to solo performer and composer.