I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama and began playing classical piano when I was six. My first musical inspiration was my grandfather, who had been a professional clarinet player in big bands as a young man. He also played piano by ear, and I would crawl under the piano whenever he came to visit and listen to him play. I dabbled in songwriting when I was kid, but always sang so no one else in the house could hear me. I went on to study a lot of music. I majored in music in college, got a master's degree in composition, and studied piano in Germany. But, even while I was doing all this, I always found myself drawn mostly to songs... when I look back, even though I was writing "classical" music, I was approaching it as a songwriter. And I continued to occasionally write songs, but again hid them away. After grad school, I decided to move to Los Angeles to study film scoring and was soon writing music for television and films, some more rewarding than others. But again, my heart wasn't in it. So, I finally reached the point where I had to listen to myself and write the music I wanted to write. Very shortly after that, I met Kat Bode (formerly Maslich), and we formed the duo eastmountainsouth. The timing of it all was uncanny. Within a year we were signed by one of my idols, Robbie Robertson, to DreamWorks records, and we made our debut that I produced with another one of my idols, Mitchell Froom. Up until this point, I had done little to no live performing. So, it was a terrifying prospect to get up and sing in front of people. But I had no choice. And one of the reasons I was able to do it was because we sang most of our material together. In fact, that was really the sound of eastmountainsouth. We had a very special vocal harmony blend. And we had an amazing year and a half of touring opening for Lucinda Williams, Traci Chapman, and our final show at the Hollywood Bowl opening for Lyle Lovett and Shelby Lynn. The record label was bought, and we were shifted to a couple of different labels but eventually dropped. I was also feeling more and more that I wanted to work as a solo artist. So, I decided to leave the band. It was a very difficult decision to make, knowing that in some ways, I would have to start over. It has been an amazing and humbling journey from then to now. I had to learn to sing in front of people without the comfort of harmony on every song. And often, there was no other way to do it than getting up and sucking in front of lots of people. I’m still learning to sing, and I’m still learning to write good songs, but when I listen to leavetaking, for the first time I can honestly say it sounds like me. -pba

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