A string to hold it together
I started learning guitar from a neighbor lady right across the street when I was six or seven, living in Marshalltown, IA, a train and factory town right in the middle of the state. I already had kid guitars and an extensive collection of guitar player moves and dances in my repertoire. I took lessons for about a year, and was able to play John Denver and Beatles songs, as well as some songs from a book I bought at Musicland, "Greatest Hits of the 70's." I learned licks from my uncle, Jim Finders, who played in rock bands around town, wrote songs, and brought his guitar to family events. I remember really being taken by story songs, like "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," and "Lyin' Eyes," and would practice everyday to learn the words and be able to change chords in time. My teacher was adamant that I practice singing and playing at the same time, and I was resistant, because I wasn't really interested in singing. But, she was right in that you learn to change your chords quicker when your vocal line gets tired of waiting for your fingers to get themselves to their assigned location.
Not long after that I started playing guitar in church. I was an altar boy at St. Henry's Parish, but so were all my friends, so becoming part of the Sunday music team seemed like a promotion. However, I didn't enjoy playing with that large group of multi-age acoustic guitar strummers and I eventually was able to get a service where I was the only guitar player. I told the people what songs we were singing and what page they were on in the "Glory and Praise" songbook.
In school, I would meet buddies and form bands, finally finding Steve and Greg in junior high and we formed a band called "Teeb and the Skids," but I'm pretty sure we had some other names as well. We worked up some original songs, as well as a few covers, and played parties in 8th grade. In high school I was active in choir, swing choir and playing in church. I joined a multi-denominational Christian youth singing group founded by Bob Blazek, called, "The God-Is-Alive Singers" and we traveled around churches in Iowa in a bus, playing for services, as well as concerts we'd give that same day or the night before. I played guitar for the group and sang some solos, and also did some MC work between songs or at the start of our shows.
I started playing pro gigs as soon as I settled into campus life in Dubuque, Iowa, 1987. I played on and off campus: bars, coffee shops, libraries and music stores. I wrote songs as well as built my songlist way out, so I could easily play four-hour gigs, which were commonly on my calendar. I started working at Uncle Ike's Music in Dubuque and did basic guitar repair and maintenance, taught some lessons, and sold guitars, amps, and other gear to the large music community in town at that time. I joined a couple of bands, including PoJamas, which was focused on original music and longer "jam" arrangements. We played whiskey and weed-fueled gigs up and down the Mississippi, driving home late each night. I also had my own blues-rock band for a while called Rhythm Method. I loved playing the blues and would sit in with my favorite band in town, the Mississippi Band.
The constant bar-party vibe and late late nights of the rock band scene made me long for coffee shops and listening rooms, so in the mid 90's I refocused on solo work, plus I could make a little more money playing alone. I met vocalist Amy Stott during this period, who had some gigs of her own and was looking for a guitarist to accompany her set. I think in looking back, as we were working on those songs, the intimacy of playing music with others kind of shook us both. We staved off the lure of romance for a few months, played a few gigs together and then I took summer trip to Hawaii.
I had been working as a special education teacher in Dubuque at an alternative high school, and used my summers off to travel for music, freshen up the set list and refuel for more creative endeavors, and this particular summer I went to stay with a friend on the Big Island. I played three nights a week in Kona, all at the Lava Java, making enough money to consider a full-time transplant for myself. But playing music on the islands limits you to gigs on that island and I really wanted to travel and play my songs for crowds all over the country.
So, I moved back to Dubuque, and contacted Amy, asked her if she wanted to play my songs with me, and this time we didn't really even try to stave off the attraction. To briefly summarize, it was a spectacularly creative merger! We produced a marriage, our two daughters: Emma Rose and Clara Sage, as well as two self-produced albums in less than three years.
I suspended my teaching career and focused on playing listening rooms with Amy. She booked gigs, I wrote songs, we raised our babies, and struggled (hard) to pay the bills and keep our van running all over the midwest. Those were good years for traveling folk duos--there were lots of gigs between Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois and Minnesota, and CD sales were a great way to augment your gig-pay. We continued to widen our circuit, relocating to Iowa's most fertile art scene, Iowa City, in 2000. There we soaked up the music of that community, including Greg Brown, Iris DeMent, Dave Moore, Al Murphy, Bob Black, in addition to all the other younger disciples (like us) who were playing around town and sitting in with each others' bands. We continued to write and record music.
By 2005, I had won the Chris Austin Songwriting Contest at Merlefest in Wilkesboro, North Carolina, and some notoriety came our way. We built out the band around the bluegrass music my style had been growing toward. We added Billy Valencia on stand-up bass, and a rotation of hotshot lead players including the aforementioned Al Murphy and Bob Black, but also the effervescent Dustin Busch on dobro. I formed the Burlington Street Bluegrass Band around that time, and played with those guys every Wednesday at The Mill in Iowa City. I think that band put me through a years-long bluegrass residency, learning all the standards, and soaking up the feel of that eastern Iowa bluegrass and folk-country sound that had been pioneered and sharpened by those very same people. I won the Merlefest songwriting contest again in 2006, and it seemed like there was some momentum gathering in my career.
Amy and my circuit had widened toward Nebraska, and our forays to Folk Alliance and International Bluegrass Music Association conventions had introduced us not only to promoters and DJ's in the business, but to peers in Colorado, notably Aaron Youngberg and Erin Coats (who soon after married Aaron), and we began to play shows with them. We made a record together in 2008, and decided to move the family to Fort Collins, Colorado.
The Colorado scene and community was great for our music career, as we joined forces with the Youngbergs and decided in a void of imagination to call the band "Finders and Youngberg." We played around the front range of Colorado, as well as Nebraska and Iowa, supporting the record we had made. However, sadly, our marriage was in the ditch, and Amy and I split up within a few months of our Colorado move, awkwardly finishing our contracted gigs together that summer and divorcing in 2009.
Being a new transplant to Colorado, trying to co-parent Emma and Clara, struggling to pay bills and somehow keep moving my music career forward forced me to reconsider public school teaching and I returned to the classroom in 2009. These were very hard years for me, but I was so fortunate to continue to play music with the Youngbergs, as well as Rich Zimmerman and Ryan Drickey, who were part of the rebranding of "Finders and Youngberg" into "FY5." We released a record in 2010, and signed on to Pickin' Productions booking agency, which later merged with Quicksilver Productions in Washington, DC, and began to travel around the country to festivals, listening rooms, theaters and bars. FY5 endeavored to be the folkiest band at the bluegrass festival, and the bluegrassiest band at the folk festival. The band ate up songs I continued to write and album after album was full of my songs, augmented with clever and skilled arrangements and reconceptualizations by those four amazing band-mates. I love those guys so much, and to this day look forward to every chance we get to play together.
Personally, I found some recovery from my low years of poverty, depression and substance abuse, meeting Alyssa Pinkerton in 2011, quitting drinking in 2017. I decided to continue to teach public school, hopefully until I could notch a pension, which allowed me to shore up my finances and provide a bit of stability for my girls. Pinkerton and I married in 2018 and bought the house we live in today.
The pandemic provided opportunity to reconsider different avenues of musical expression for me and I bought a Strat, an amp, more than a few overdrive pedals and began to play the blues, forming Spidercat in 2019 with Eric Thorin and Larry Bridges. Even before the scene opened back up from the Covid shutdown, we were playing blues (classic and original) in outdoor stages and even on a moving flatbed truck around the streets of Lyons, Colorado!
As the gigs returned, FY5 entered a predictable slow-down with growing daughters all around and Rich's departure from the band in 2021. We endure on the bluegrass scene, but are no longer in the"push it" mode we maintained during the 20-teen-years. Spidercat allowed me to stay busy with local gigs and meet amazing blues and rock musicians in Fort Collins. I also joined in the forming of a crazy concept band called the Grocery Story in 2024, featuring the songs and piano of John Magnie, Fort Collins resident, former Subdude and true wizard of the funky and wacky.
But as I found my way post pandemic, it was never lost on me that my true center as a musician has always been just me and a guitar. I felt that it was time to finally do just that. My oldest daughter, Emma Rose, had through her young 20's established her own sound and career with her band "Sound of Honey" and "Big Richard." Her enthusiasm for my idea of refocusing my musical efforts on just being what I've always been: a singer-songwriter, spilled into her offering to produce my first-ever solo record. In summer of 2026, she assembled a small ensemble to record five of my songs in Lyons Colorado, and thus was born a little record to be released in early 2027, titled, "Faded Blue."
At the start of this past summer (2026), after more than 30 years teaching high school and middle school special education, I finally hit that pension notch and didn't think twice about stepping out of that and into full-time music. I've been playing mostly song-focused shows, rather than chasing the bar gigs that wave a hundred bucks at you. FY5 still plays quite a few shows per year around the state and has a new album releasing in 2027 as well. I truly don't see that band ever breaking up, even if we have inevitably slowed down.
What a story that has been, and still is! I owe so much thanks to all of you who've been moved by my songs or singing, who've talked to me after shows, who stream my songs on your phones and such, who've marked down my gigs on the calendar and made the effort to show up. There are thousands and thousands of you out there! I can't tell you how much that support has meant to me at every stage of this journey.
I hope you can find a time to catch one of my shows or at least listen to my record when it comes out in a few months. Thanks again! Don't forget to sign up for my email list on the home page!--Mike
