Bio
Geoff is a stand-alone songwriter focused on sharing songs and stories. Honest storytelling lines about feelings and experiences we can all relate to shape his craft. His Americana influenced folky rock style offers expressive lyrics and vocal style that resonates for listeners.
In 2007, Geoff was sidelined with his first jolt of MS, temporarily lost his vision and for many weeks was left alone with his thoughts. It was here that the songwriting path showed up. He realized that songs start in the mind of the writer and are given life in the mind of the listener. After his vision returned, he noticed that the lines of his journal during this time all flowed as lyrics rather than text. The seeds were planted.
In 2010, Geoff joined a songwriting session in Costa Rica with some Nashville songwriters. Songwriting became an artisan craft at that moment and the path was in place.
Darrell Scott taught Geoff to find space that allows songs to show up. Mary Gauthier helped him to be honest with the stories, brutally honest. Both encouraged allowing the actuality of life and depths of soul into the songs. More recently, time spent with Eliza Gilkyson, John Gorka and Don Richmond has helped improve Geoff’s songwriting chops immensely.
His songwriting continues to help him and his audience deal with a wacky world around him.
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Geoff’s high school groups were electric bands playing Cream, Hendrix and eventually branching out into in a short-lived Philadelphia group with a local groove of soul and R&B. During his college years in the Boston area he transitioned to acoustic music influenced by Joe Val and The New England Bluegrass Boys along with the wider Cambridge folk scene of the 1970’s. This time period also began a 50 year journey as a Grateful Dead Head, an ongoing influence on his music.
Geoff had a long career in the mainstream marketing world telling stories to the masses. All this time, his guitar was still in his hands every day. In all waking moments when not at his day job, those years shaped Geoff’s music with jams that ranged from an informal duo with the bassist of the Tommy Dorsey Band to the Boulder music scene orbiting around the Ophelia Swing Band, The Reasonable Band and Mollie O’Brien. After moving to Durango Colorado in 1982, the jam based influence of the Telluride Bluegrass Festival and early Americana scene heavily influenced his style with regular jamming and songwriting circles.
Today, Geoff continues to hone his craft while living in Southwest Colorado. A regular diet of summer festivals, songwriting workshops and song circles provides new energy. Life experiences provide new stories.