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Bart took up guitar in 1965, and soon found his way into a fairly successful high school dance band, which he describes as one of the happiest experiences of his life. From 1971-1981, he worked as a salesman and department manager in a music store, playing in dance bands on the weekends.

Beginning in 1981, Bart made playing the guitar a full time venture, playing as a hired side-man musician for various dance bands, concert appearances, and studio session dates. The session dates fueled Bart’s interest in studio work and got him acquainted with some of the techniques and procedures involved. It also landed him a job as part-time maintenance technician in a local commercial studio.

Looking back through his personal collection of calendars and schedules, Bart estimates that he played 2200 dances and concerts before retiring from live performance in 1993, at which time he took an audio engineering job in the commercial studio where he’d served as maintenance and repair technician from 1985.

In 1995, Bart began construction on his own recording studio (completed in 1997). Out of a process of hard work, perseverance, some luck, and much support from the local music community, the studio took root and has been quite busy ever since.

All along, a studio album of his own original guitar songs had been a hope and aspiration. Like most musicians, finding time away from work and responsibilities to write and record a full album project was a considerable obstacle. Full of many ideas for themes and songs, Bart’s musical background had taken him into such a wide range of musical styles it became daunting to build a solo album concept around such diverse experience.

Bart describes his process of conceptualizing the nature and style of the music for his first solo release, Once Upon A Guitar:

“I firmly consider myself a Jack-of-all-Trades and Master-of-None kind of musician. Diversity seemed to be my musical strength as well as an authentic representation of who I am as a musician. But diversity would not provide a cohesive vision for an album. While I’d studied, and was influenced by the great guitar masters of pop, country, fusion, acoustic, and finger-style playing, I was certainly not one of their equals, so an album display of technical wizardry was not an option. Thus began what the album would not be, but the question still remained as to what it would be.

Ideas for a central theme seemed plentiful. An instrumental album could be about relaxation and contemplation, grief, or sadness. It could be spiritual, a guided meditation, or conversely punchy and energizing, or tied in to themes such as Christmas or hymns. It could be blues, pop, jazz, and so forth, in the stylistic realm. But none of those central themes seemed to fulfill the quest for a general diversity of style and genre.

Thinking back to my earliest days at the guitar, I recalled one of the most enjoyable times ever, when I’d played in a dance band doing instrumental surf tunes and spy movie themes. The songs were fun and easy to play as well as being fun and easy to listen to. The lead guitar took on nearly the same role as the lead vocalist would do in a pop radio song. Looking back, this idea seems childishly simple, but it took some thinking to find.

Armed with a rough idea of the concept, I browsed through my collection of basic original song ideas from over the years and built or rebuilt the motives into what became Once Upon A Guitar.

It’s been a year since the release, and I’ll have to say I’m very happy with the level of public acceptance the album has enjoyed. On the other hand, Internet marketing of music is reliant on familiar key phrases like Gospel, Bluegrass, Classic Rock, Alternative, and so forth, which leaves Once Upon A Guitar a little lost in the ocean of options available to shoppers. As such, I’m of a mind that the next release will likely be more oriented toward a clear, easy stylistic description rather than a wide range of styles.

Please send an email with thoughts, suggestions or questions.  I'm always eager to hear from you.