My childhood was rooted in music and art and horses. I thought if people knew those three things about me, they would know who I was. I loved to sing and draw as a little girl of 7 or 8 yrs old. My first time singing for people was when I was 10 at a church Christmas program in Basin City, WA. My Aunt Beulah was practicing for the program with a couple of her friends around the piano and I kept singing along in the background. They decided I should have my own song in the program and signed me up to sing Silent Night. That summer we hit on hard times and went to Montana to pick cherries in Flathead Valley. My mom would sing with me and taught me how to hold the melody while she sang alto on You Are My Sunshine. My first time on stage was in Deer Park, WA at the middle school I went to. The music teacher went to several schools to teach part time at each one. When she came to our school, she instigated a talent show and encouraged us all to participate. I signed up to sing a song I knew well from listening to my daddy’s records and his radio station, Your Cheating Heart. Grandma Alkire bought me the sheet music and the music teacher kindly transposed it to a key I could sing in and accompanied me on piano. My mom and dad were very excited and proud of me. Daddy found a silver sparkly cowgirl outfit for me he borrowed from a friend who had a Jr Rodeo princess in his family. I loved singing that night on stage and was awarded a standing ovation and tons of compliments by the audience. Grandma Alkire was sure I could win a talent show on TV and took me up to audition at the station for Starlit Stairway, a local talent search program in Spokane, WA. I didn’t have my own accompanist, so their studio piano player played for my try-out. I didn’t know that magic key my music teacher had picked for me and I bombed out really badly when he picked a key that was too low. Daddy decided if I was going to sing, I better learn an instrument to accompany myself. He rented a guitar for one month and bought me a Mel Bay beginner’s guitar book. I taught myself that month the old folk songs in the key of C. But we couldn’t afford to rent it another month and watched for an opportunity to buy one. A couple years went by before I got my own guitar. We were strapped financially, and Dad was without work when we went picking fruit to make ends meet. The orchard hired me at half pay to thin pears and I earned enough money to buy my own guitar at Kmart! We were living in a campground and I learned the chords to House of the Rising Sun from one of the other campers. Without anyone else to teach me I played all I knew and started writing my own songs. I even made up chords to my songs because the ones I knew were not enough. Then I joined choir for 6 years! I also became a Christian and wrote a couple of Christian songs: Temperance and Miracles.

Bob's music background was mostly from playing in the high school band. He learned to play trumpet in 3rd grade and stuck with it through High School and two years of college, where he also joined choir and dance band and took up music as his minor. All his brothers also played brass. He loved the Big Band era.  After college, Bob pursued learning 12 string guitar and traded his expensive trumpet for a guitar to learn the more contemporary folk genres of the time.