I am fortunate in so many ways-I’m married to an amazing woman (Linda!) have a thriving business (Nelson ACE Hardware) a fabulous dog, (Callie!) and I perform with four of the best musicians anywhere.

I started singing early in life.  At home with my mom and sister, we listened to The Grass Roots, The Beatles, Neil Diamond and, God help me, Barry Manilow! I was in chorus through graded and junior high school, but my voice was really unremarkable until it changed between 7^th and 8^th grade. In High School I tried out for a musical, mostly to meet all the girls involved in drama, only to find that I loved being on stage and being part of The production. Not wanting to make music be a “job”, I passed up opportunities to further my musical education to start a hardware store with my parents in 1983.  I spent 10 years or so on stage with a number of vocal and theatre groups, mostly with Montpelier Theatre Guild and the Barre Players. In 1991 my father hired a young lady by the name of Annette Pickel, (soon to be Boisvert). In 1994  Annette and her husband Rob were hosting a Halloween party at their new home in Graniteville, which Linda and I attended. Rob and a couple of friends were playing a bunch of rock songs and asked if anyone would sing with them.(imagine live karaoke) Linda said “you should sing”, so I told the guys I would try a song or two. Between our limited song repertoires, we didn’t perform too many that night, but we did “Born to be Wild” (still a Native Tongue staple) about 9 times. The next day I received a call from Rob; “You want to sing with us?”

Rob has turned into one of the best drummers I’ve heard. He never misses a beat, never loses time and while there are others out there that might be flashier there is no one that knows how to do his job better than Rob. We are SO fortunate that Rob is the person that drives the band.

The first few practices were more than a little tough. I had been singing show tunes and baroque music while Rob, Vic and Ed were boning up on Guns n Roses, Metallica, AC/DC, Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osborne. I listened to rock music most of the time, but it ‘s a whole different ball game trying to sing it!  Let’s just say we struggled to find some middle ground! After spending two years in Rob’s basement, Vic moved to Massachusetts and Ed joined the Army. Rob worked construction at the time and a guy on the crew said “my little brother can play guitar” so we invited him along. TJ Powers showed up looking like he was about 10 years old (I think he was 15).  I have to admit, I had my doubts- I mean he couldn’t even get himself to practice; his brother had to drive him! But once he plugged in, OH could he play! And TJ joined the band. At the time TJ was a great technical player. Over the course of the ten years we’ve been making music, TJ has developed a great “feel” for his guitar licks. It’s an odd night that he doesn’t give me chills when he plays. An old friend of mine was playing bass in another band, but was always ready and willing to play so I called Todd and asked him if he wanted to “jam” with us. As great a bass player as Todd is, the most exciting thing (for me) about him joining the band was his amazing harmonies and backup vocals-Native Tongue now had another singer! I had spent 2 years singing with no harmonies behind me, doing 99 percent of the singing, so Todd’s addition was awesome for me. One of Todd’s greatest musical qualities is his uncanny ability to find the right harmony on any song at any time-all while playing great bass licks. Todd was also the only member that had experience playing out and doing booking, so we relied a lot on him at this time.

Now we had the core of the group, a name and a practice room at Rob’s house, it was time to get serious. After adding and deleting a couple of other musicians, we worked hard to get a full night’s worth of music together. Once we had it we started banging on doors begging someone to hire us, and someone finally did. If memory serves me correctly, our first official (public) Native Tongue gig was at World Famous Charlie O’s in Montpelier-date unknown. Once we started playing out, the phone started ringing and it hasn’t stopped since. As time progressed, we looked for ways to improve, adding and dropping a keyboard player in 2004, Steve Quenneville “guest starred” with us for almost a year on drums and percussion while Rob recovered from shoulder surgery; and finally we convinced Mike to join us in a benefit for Todd and Serena in 2006. After the benefit I asked Mike how he felt, he responded with and I quote “why in hell didn’t I do this earlier?!” And the current lineup of Native Tongue was settled.

Along the way Native Tongue has had babies- Todd, TJ and Rob have all had children during our time together. We have battled family and personal illness, lost friends and family, we saw TJ through college and marriage, gone through surgical procedures together and more but through it all the music has been constant.

One of the many reasons Native Tongue has been successful is that we all understand that the music must be respected. It is our duty to do justice to the words and music that others have written before us. If  we lose sight of that, the music suffers and that is unacceptable. Now that we are writing and performing our own music, we understand and appreciate the difficulty of laying parts of ourselves out there for everyone to see and hear and our respect increases!

Personally, music is a love, not a job; once it starts becoming work I’ll be done performing.

I have many, many “Thank yous”  to Rob for keeping the beat and keeping me sane; Todd for his bass, amazing harmonies, all his sound work and for making each night a musical adventure; Mike for finally joining us and adding so much depth to the group; to TJ for playing like only a very few can; my Mom for my love of music; Rob’s wife, Annette, for running Nelson Hardware while I’m out making music but most especially to my wife, my love, my mate, Linda, for putting up with all the hours of practice and gigs and for all of her unconditional love and support. I couldn’t do it without her!