Let me tell you who I am and what I do. I’m complicated and simple (Duh, yup, yup) all at the same time. I have a graduate degree in education. Aren’t you impressed? I’ve never used the degree to gain real employment, except for the three years I worked as a Lecturer of Human Development and Learning at the University of North Carolina. I carried a heavy shovel in those days and did sling my fair share of academic poop.

      My love of music has kept me free from the work-a-day world for going on forty years. Since I was fourteen, I have always been involved with a group of musicians or on my own as a solo artist. I’m sixty-three, now. You do the math. I play guitar and five-string banjo, with a little bass thrown in for bottom. I am presently playing in a trio. We call ourselves the Shananagans. That’s right, all ‘a’s. We like to confuse people. My brother, Tom Kennedy and I have been at the hub of the group for over twenty-five years. Our present third man is a highly talented picker and singer, Joe Zajac. If you would like to know more about us, click on www.arkalbums.com.

      I have just finished a cd entitled, Dick Lewis: “Coastin’ Through the Years.” I play in an Irish band, but this endeavor is all original and all folk. There are no drums, or electric guitars (oops; all except for a bonus cut that got dredged up from almost thirty years ago). Yes, only the sweet sound of acoustic guitars, banjo, mandolin, pennywhistle, bass and dog howl on this baby.

     My son, Ian, engineered the project, which took us five years to complete. We only recorded when he came home from cruising the world, doing sound for the ship’s production shows. Yup, he’s in the show biz, too. Wait until I tell you about my other kid, Jake. Anyhoo, the cd is finished and available for consumption. It’s done in very good taste.   

     About seven years ago, I got a wild hair to write a mystery novel. I’ve been a fan of Robert B. Parker for a long time. I thought, “If he can do it, so can I.” Wow! What a dope. Anyway, I wrote a three hundred and eighty page piece of tripe. You needed a compass to get through it. It was terrible, but it was a beginning. Over the course of the next four years and with the help of a lot of good friends, I finally whittled it down to one hundred and eighty pages. In those four years of rewriting, I managed to get a couple of short stories published in as many anthologies, “Curiouser and Curiouser”; Into The Light, Daniel and Daniel Publishing and “Whispers of Inspiration” Saying Goodbye With An Old Guitar, Sunpiper Publishing. In that space of time, I wrote a young, adult novel, Lottie Little: The Amazing Gazing Ball, book one of the series. Sunpiper Media Publishing will begin marketing the book mid December (2006).

      So, you see, I write and play for a living. Not bad, if you can get the work.

Enjoy,

Dick (R. H.) Lewis