I grew up in Boulder, Colorado and played a ”Beatle-style” bass guitar in a high-school copy band called the Twilighters. Copy bands are expected to play songs – usually well-known or the current Top-40 songs – just like, or very close to, the way the original artist recorded them.

We played hard and had fun. In those days, no one was writing their own songs – it wasn’t done because the audience didn’t want to hear your originals. They wanted to dance and drink and carry-on.

Those were the days when band members wore the same outfits or uniforms with matching jackets and pants (see photos of the early Beatles to get an idea). The Twilighters wore light blue, collarless jackets, white shirts and dark pants. We looked clean-cut and presentable. Our parents and other elders approved as long as the volume on the amps stayed low. That didn’t stop us from singing songs like “Louie-Louie” and “What I Say” with suggestive and X-rated lyrics.

After college I played in a blues cover band called Sweetbone. I took up harmonica under the influence of the sounds and songs I heard on albums by Sonny Boy Williamson II (Rice Miller), Jimmy Reed and Sonny Terry & Brownie McGee. Tony “Little Sun” Glover’s instruction book “Blues Harp” published by Oak was also a big help and an excellent introduction to the mechanics of playing blues harmonica.

For a kid who grew up against the backdrop of the Rocky Mountains and living a long way from the Mississippi Delta and Chicago, modern blues music and blues harp were a revelation.

After not playing music for a few years, I became the lyric-writing half of a songwriting team with a very talented keyboard player, arranger and home-recordist named John Hopkins. Now I had a chance to write lyrics to John’s melodies.

We wrote a couple dozen songs together and demoed several in John’s basement recording studio. John found a fabulous professional singer – Cheryl Renee – to sing the songs. One of my biggest thrills from that period was hearing Cheryl sing what I thought was our best song – “You Taught Me How” – with her band in a Denver nightclub. That experience hooked me forever on songwriting.

I’m a mostly self-taught musician and songwriter. I took a few guitar lessons from Jock Bartley, one of the founders of the band Firefall, a successful Colorado-based country-rock band with charted national hits.

Jock is one of the tastiest guitarists around and an excellent songwriter as well. He got me moving on the guitar. One of his best instructions was to, “Keep the pendulum moving (meaning your picking hand), and don’t let it stop.” (It works.) Thank you, Jock for all the lessons.

I live in Southern California where it sometimes seems as if every other person I meet is an accomplished musician or artist. It’s a humbling experience and good reason to keep on practicing and hope people aren’t too hard on my playing. Maybe one day I might surprise myself and everyone else.

So my intention is to share my songs with you on a regular basis. When I started on this journey I had many nearly finished songs and other song fragments and ideas that I was working on.

There’s been a lot to learn, and by no means am I finished learning - and that’s one of the wonders of songwriting and making music. For me every song has become a learning experience.

So if you like what you hear, I hope you’ll visit this site and share this songwriting journey with me. I’m going to do my best to write the finest songs I’m capable of and record them to the best of my ability.

If you like my music please let your friends know. Send them this link: www.reynoldakison.com . I appreciate it.

Thank You for your interest and your support.