Page 13 - BiTS_05_MAY_2023

Most small towns had developed closer to the newer highways near their towns. Rich Hill did as
well. We still had a small downtown with the big old shops, and buildings from the 1930s. I
remember we even had an old-style drug store with trinkets and candy.

I often look back and write songs about these memories I have from that time in my life.

LL: You come from a musical family. Would you please tell us all about that?

NS: I started playing keyboards and singing songs with my mother on a Wurlitzer keyboard. I
really enjoyed that keyboard, the sounds it made and how it played.
My father was a guitarist, and he would play shows on the weekends and leave his guitars out
in the living room, and I would carefully pick them up and play them a little bit. My father was
right-handed; I’m definitely left-handed so I would play his guitars upside down and backwards.
He would tell me I would have an easier time learning to play right-handed. It just did not work
that way for me, so I continued playing upside down with the strings going the opposite way
until I was 14.

The summer before my 14th birthday I auditioned for Paseo Academy of Performing Arts, a
magnet school in Kansas City. They accepted me on the condition that I learned to play guitar
with the strings strung correctly so I could play classical guitar and have my thumb to play the
bass strings. I spent the entire summer that year repositioning the way I played to make this
opportunity happen.

It took me about six months to play with the strings strung in standard. I have played the last 30
years with the guitar strung correctly.

I do still play upside down as well.

LL: What about your musical educational
background?

NS: Paseo Academy of Fine and Performing Arts was
my main education in music. I had started there my
sophomore year of high school and graduated. The
reason why I wanted to go to the school was because
we had four hours of music per day, and four hours
of core curriculum. I was mainly playing classical
guitar for my guitar orchestra, studying music
theory and ear training. Alongside this, I was
working with the jazz orchestra a bit as well,
learning basic jazz theory and performance.

Another note, this school was for all forms of
performing arts, visual, poetry, acting, dancing, theater, tech, ceramics, drawing, painting.

Developing friendships with different artists from different media of art really broadened my
perspective of my art as not only just music, but an expression of artistic creativity.

We were required every semester to take a class outside of our major. That is where I got
interested in a lot of different art forms. I did work hard for the large amounts of time spent in
music, and I also enjoyed getting into some other new artistic interests. I had fun with theater
tech, that class taught me the fundamentals of a large stage which came in very handy down the
road.

I enjoyed the poetry classes and I feel that did help me with my songwriting.