Daniel’s Big Deal Bio (’cause someone said I should have one.)

      I was born in a Nissen hut overlooking the blue Specific Ocean on Elvis’11th birthday.
      “What is a Nissen hut,” you query? Well, my folks did, too, when its constituent parts were unceremoniously dumped onto the bare lot they’d purchased. As the flatbed truck went lumbering off, they were scratching their heads when a fellow walked up and said, “I see you have a Nissen hut.”
      “We thought it was a Quonset,” was the best retort my Master’s-from-the-Sorbonne-degreed mother could manage.
      The fellow proceeded to explain the difference between the two (Google it if you’re curious.) It turned out that he was an architect, he designed it and he lived up the street.
      At this point you’re probably humming, It’s a small world, after all but I cannot resist noting that we live on an insignificant rock swinging around a third-rate sun in a solar system among billions of others in a moderate sized galaxy among billions of galaxies — I’d say it is an exceedingly small world. But I digress.

      I narrowly avoided what would have been a way cool brush with folk-world fame when my parents, in their infinite wisdom, turned down an invitation to a party with Woody Guthrie. A bunch of years later I took them to see the bio-pic Bound for Glory and they were kicking themselves all the way home (“We didn’t know who Woodie Guthrie was!”)
      I remember, however, a beat up jalopy that terrorized the Topanga Canyon hills, bearing the legend Chico has no brakes on its flank.

      We moved around a lot. My dad was a chiropractor but couldn’t seem to clue into the notion that it was a business. He thought it was just about healing, the dummy.
      My mother was a school- and piano teacher. My brother, David and I lucked out and received first-rate private school educations for five years or so, a perk of mother’s teaching gigs. I first learned to read music and play piano at the age of three at Gateway School in Vista, (Southern) California, run by the granddaughter of William Jennings Bryan (who raised her), Helen Bryan Touyarot.
     I did go to a public school one year – elementary, it was. However, upon graduation it was determined that I was too young to go to their precious first grade. Hell, I was already reading on a second grade level, so my folks just went and put me in a Seventh Day Adventist school – in second grade! What did the 7th Dayers know about California state law. Smart was smart, and t’ hell with the ‘authorities’. Besides, I was born & raised vegetarian, so I fit right into their dietary scheme.

     At the age of nine my parents took me to hear Mozart at the Symphony. I came home with a souvenir – a beat up 2nd Violin part, and the jones to learn that instrument, the first time (maybe the only) I came close to taking music seriously.
      So I began studying classical violin, in Vista, California with Lloyd Von Hayden, San Diego Symphony violist and contra bassist. At the same age I was awarded honorable mention for a flute/piano composition entered in a San Diego Symphony competition.
      My second teacher was Alfiero Pierno, SD Symphony Concertmaster; my third was Vlado Kolitsch, a concert violinist and designer of the Kolitsch shoulder rest (since bought and manufactured by Berkeley violin maker, Ifshin.)

       Later, when Gateway had moved to Escondido (San Diego County, if such minutiae interest you) I sealed my smartass creds by taking 5th and 6th grades in the same year. Ah, the benefits of a private school education – turn the kid into a freak. So  I graduate from high school at age 16. At least I’m old enough to drive, fer chrissakes.

      It was at another private school, on the Smith Ranch in the foothills east of San Diego that I both learned to drive backroads in an old Plymouth, and to ride bareback with a hackamore instead of a conventional bit and bridle, on a horse named (honest!) Flicka.
      Somewhere along the line in Vista or Escondido I began reading science fiction, which turned into a life-long affliction. I also wrote my first science fiction story, about atoms being miniature solar systems (no marks there for originality —.just precociousness), a tale mercifully lost in the dustbin of history.

      As if I weren’t weird enough already, Mom & Dad had to send me and my brother, David, to an experiment: Shimber Berris (‘Valley of the Birds’ in some African language where the founder, Dr. David Burden had been a missionary.) So we were the guinea pigs, the first two students in this precursor to a hippie educational institution. Actually, Dr. Burden and his schoolteacher and writer wife were pretty straight, strict disciplinarians – just with some far-out ideas on how to mold young minds.
      One day I was instructed to go out with the villager who supplied San Bartolo (65 miles south of La Paz, between the gulf port and what would come to be known as Cabo) with firewood.
     So me and he and the burro made a day of it, me learning desert lore – at least, how to find water, a handy thing to know in the desert – all very relaxed and mañanaish, but we brought the leña in.

       (My Spanish made guitar was constructed in Madrid, so I named her Madrileña (woman of Madrid.) Someone once mis-heard me, thought I’d said madre leña, taken to mean ‘mother wood’. Well, whenever my girl would give me a rough time tuning, I’d simply remind her that leña means firewood.)

       One day we built a house, with an axe and a saw, a sledgehammer and some steel wedges, and a machete, some steel wedges. We cut some palo amarillo for the posts, palo de arco, woven like a basket for the walls, a palm tree which we split for beams, and bamboo for the roof cross pieces.
      With the palm fronds for thatch, we tied them to the bamboo with twine from cactus leaves and there you have it: a naturally air conditioned cottage perfect for the Baja clime.
     There was book learnin’ (Virginia’s department), of course, but liberally interlaces with experiences such as a field trip to a dairy ranch where my brother David and I learned how cheese was made.
     We grew some wheat by our house, the only stone house in the village, right on the main road to the tip of the peninsula. When we harvested it we gave the berries to our worker, Juan, to give to his wife. The next day he brought us tortillas, fresh from the oven.
     The whole setup would have given a U.S. Health Department fits, but to David and I it was one big camping trip. No indoor plumbing. We carried water from the arroyo, to be poured into a 50 gallon canvas cistern, chlorinated to kill the bad bugs. The arroyo was also where the laundry was done.
     Just the other day I was telling someone about how the kitchens were separate buildings. ‘Great idea!’ was the response. The kitchen gets out of hand and the whole house doesn’t go up in flames. Never thought of that, but makes sense.
      Ever seen those old-fashioned irons where you open the lid to put in hot coals? Yeah – Baja’s notion of high tech.
     No electricity, and outhouse for the necessaries – my brother and I were young and stupid enough to think it was fun!

      [This is all I got so far. The rest is part of my resumé, which you are certainly welcome to read  I'll get back to this when I'm able.  Y’know, cobbler’s kids, and all that .... —DbA]

      In high school, placed second in a Riverside County talent show; at the 1964 Redlands University Music Festival my (violin) partner (in the "Bach Double" in D minor) and I were was the only violinists invited to perform at the post-competition recital and were awarded scholarships to a workshop there.

      Began guitar at age 16 at the University of Guadalajara; played violin in the San Diego State College Symphony; began performing in the San Diego area as a singer/guitarist; began songwriting at the same age; did some recording studio work as a violinist; performed in coffee houses throughout Southern California.

      At age 20, sat in regularly as a singer/guitarist at the Four Winds supper club at the gig of Joe Fos (himself, now, more than twenty-five years in the Eddie Duchin Room at the Sun Valley Lodge.)
      At same age, played at Florentino's supper club in La Jolla, California as a violinist accompanying an Italian tenor.

      First hired as a professional musician the morning (just past midnight – long story) that I turned 21 to play at the Staff NCO Club at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot (while working days at San Diego's Mercy Hospital as a conscientious objector – another long story).  Gig lasted six weeks – pretty good for my first time out.

      Second gig as strolling singer/guitarist at the Escondido Country Club for eight months.  Performed in restaurants and clubs throughout the San Diego area until I moved to the Bay Area in 1971 at the age of 23.

      Elegant Bib, Alamo, 3½ years, 1971-75
      Panchito's/Arturo's, Walnut Creek, 3½ years, 1976-79
      Chatillon Restaurant, San Ramon, 18 years, 1982-2000
      Accompanist to Guillermo Muñiz since 1979
      (Choir) Bass section leader, First Unitarian Church, Berkeley, Kensington, for three years in mid-80s
      Cantor at St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Church, Berkeley since 1992

      Between weddings and funerals, I have played in churches too numerous to mention; between weddings and parties I have played at virtually every country club and wedding venue in Contra Costa County, and in other counties as well; singing in Hebrew (and as a Jew) I am popular with Jewish groups in the East Bay; not-quite-fluently Spanish-speaking, and singing close to two dozen songs in Spanish, I get along well in the Latino community as well.  I also sing in French, (Neapolitan) Italian, German, Japanese, Hawaiian, (Brazilian) Portuguese and a couple of words of Russian (something of a language junkie, I speak some French and know phrases in the previously mentioned languages and in Tagalong, Samoan, Greek, Swedish and Russian and Gaelic.)

      My repertoire has consisted of more than eleven hundred songs; I have composed over a thousand pieces – songs, chants, rounds, piano compositions, classical and jazz choral and a capella works and symphonic jazz pieces a la Chuck Mangione.  Many have been performed in self-produced concerts. I have also custom-composed songs, written musical arrangements and produced recording sessions as well as concerts (among which I co-arranged and co-produced a session with Linda Ronstadt's “Más Canciones” Mariachi group, Los Comperos de Nati Cano in L.A. for Guillermo doing an original version of the Star Spangled Banner.)

      As a social/political activist I have performed, provided and run sound and composed for numerous activities, marches, vigils and demonstrations around such issues as farm workers rights, nuclear disarmament, sanctions against Iraq, the death penalty, homelessness, Puerto Rican independence, the Central American wars, the School of the Americas in Ft. Benning, Georgia, the environment, and others.  For a resume of my social/political activities, you may go to my Web site (one of six domains I own), PeaceHost.net. And as you may see at my Pacifist Nation Web site I am a committed pacifist.  I do not preach and I do not prostletize, but it is who I am and comes with the package.