the story
I was born in Boulder, Colorado and grew up in Boise, Idaho. After seeing The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show, my brothers Richard and John and I made pretend guitars out of plywood and put on a concert in a neighbor’s garage. John was hidden and played 45s on the phonograph while Richard and I lip synched the songs. We would later all stand on real stages together playing our own music.
Our dad played trombone professionally for years in the big band era. He did not want us to be popular musicians. He wanted us to be classical musicians. Richard and I spent 10 years taking piano lessons and playing recitals. That wasn’t meant to be and our attention then shifted to skiing and hiking. In much the way our world changed when we saw The Beatles on TV, our world was to change again when our older brother Eric returned from Vietnam with a bunch of stereo equipment and folk records. Richard, John and I started teaching ourselves to play guitar.
After high school, I was torn between being an English major and a folksinger. The folksinger won. I moved to Seattle and later encouraged my brothers to move there as well. Eventually everyone in my family except for my dad moved to Seattle. John was studying jazz at college and I was playing open mic nights in folk clubs. One day we sat down together and wrote a song. John’s angular guitar lines and my folk melodies and lyrics made for an original sound. The rest is the history of Moving Parts.
The original lineup was John and myself on guitars, Jeff Humphrey on drums and Alex Petit on bass. Don Lange replaced Alex before we made our first single. The single was Wires b/w Window On The Moon. It was recorded at Crow Recording and produced by us and Conrad Uno. Technically, it was the first release on Uno’s new Pop Llama label. Later, Mike Dumas was to replace Jeff on drums at the same time Tom Morrison joined as keyboardist. You can find out more about Moving Parts on our site. We headlined clubs in those halcyon days of the 80’s. Our sound and material put us somewhere between the popular bands like the Heats and Cowboys and the artier bands like The Blackouts and 3 Swimmers.
One year while we were playing at Bumbershoot, an A&R person from Epic Records saw us and thus began our saga with CBS. Ultimately we were dumped when CBS sold the records group to Sony. It was the beginning of the end for the band. John was the first to leave and he was replaced by Ernie Sapiro (The Moberlys and The Cowboys) on guitar. We tried to forge ahead, but labels were not showing any interest. The experience really soured me on the music business. I formed another band afterwards called Medicine Show with Sean Denton and I on guitars, Jack Hanan (The Cowboys) on bass and Terry Ghighi on drums. Eventually, that group disbanded and I bowed out of the music scene.
I kept writing songs but stayed away from performing. I eventually set up a digital studio in my basement and started playing and recording songs. In late 2009, Moving Parts reformed. You can read that story here.
Our dad played trombone professionally for years in the big band era. He did not want us to be popular musicians. He wanted us to be classical musicians. Richard and I spent 10 years taking piano lessons and playing recitals. That wasn’t meant to be and our attention then shifted to skiing and hiking. In much the way our world changed when we saw The Beatles on TV, our world was to change again when our older brother Eric returned from Vietnam with a bunch of stereo equipment and folk records. Richard, John and I started teaching ourselves to play guitar.
After high school, I was torn between being an English major and a folksinger. The folksinger won. I moved to Seattle and later encouraged my brothers to move there as well. Eventually everyone in my family except for my dad moved to Seattle. John was studying jazz at college and I was playing open mic nights in folk clubs. One day we sat down together and wrote a song. John’s angular guitar lines and my folk melodies and lyrics made for an original sound. The rest is the history of Moving Parts.
The original lineup was John and myself on guitars, Jeff Humphrey on drums and Alex Petit on bass. Don Lange replaced Alex before we made our first single. The single was Wires b/w Window On The Moon. It was recorded at Crow Recording and produced by us and Conrad Uno. Technically, it was the first release on Uno’s new Pop Llama label. Later, Mike Dumas was to replace Jeff on drums at the same time Tom Morrison joined as keyboardist. You can find out more about Moving Parts on our site. We headlined clubs in those halcyon days of the 80’s. Our sound and material put us somewhere between the popular bands like the Heats and Cowboys and the artier bands like The Blackouts and 3 Swimmers.
One year while we were playing at Bumbershoot, an A&R person from Epic Records saw us and thus began our saga with CBS. Ultimately we were dumped when CBS sold the records group to Sony. It was the beginning of the end for the band. John was the first to leave and he was replaced by Ernie Sapiro (The Moberlys and The Cowboys) on guitar. We tried to forge ahead, but labels were not showing any interest. The experience really soured me on the music business. I formed another band afterwards called Medicine Show with Sean Denton and I on guitars, Jack Hanan (The Cowboys) on bass and Terry Ghighi on drums. Eventually, that group disbanded and I bowed out of the music scene.
I kept writing songs but stayed away from performing. I eventually set up a digital studio in my basement and started playing and recording songs. In late 2009, Moving Parts reformed. You can read that story here.
