One of my earliest music influences was Stevie Wonder. I grew up listening to an odd mixture of late '70's soul music, late '80's new wave, 50's and 60's rock and pop songs from the oldies station, and classic rock. When my family lived for a short time on the East coast, I discovered college radio for the first time and was thrilled when I discovered Suzanne Vega and New Order. Music was something that touched me deeply from a very young age; I spent many moments singing along to everything from the 1950's hit "Bobby's Girl" to "Amazing Grace" but I didn't get the nerve to let anyone hear me until I was in my early 20's. Once I got infected with the bug though, there's been no turning back.

Since I had always been an avid writer of diary rants and poetry, songwriting seemed the perfect vehicle to express myself. I had been writing lyrics for years, I just didn't know it. I started learning to play the guitar at age 20 in 1990 when I moved from Phoenix (where I had done most of my growing up) to San Francisco. I started writing songs shortly thereafter.Around this time I was really influenced by everything from the Pixies to Throwing Muses and later the Breeders to Tom Waits to REM to Nirvana to Joni Mitchell to Aretha Franklin to local artist Barbara Manning. I joined my first band and had my first paid gig that same year at the Albion bar in San Francisco, singing with the quirky pop band Pupcage, and then did solo singer songwriter gigs for awhile, in between periods of not playing much.

Ramona the Pest was born in 1995 when I moved to Berkeley and hooked up with guitarist Lucio Menegon, and it's been evolving ever since. We've released 8 batches of songs in the forms of vinyl, cassetttes, and cds and we've toured most of the U.S. I count Lucio as a huge influence on me musically; he's taught me a lot about the art and skill of making good music. He's also turned me on to some great music, like Mark Ribot and Television and Patti Smith and the Who and Matthew Sweet.

Thanks to college radio I've had the good fortune to be turned on to many cool bands through KALX 90.7 fm. Bands and artists like Gillian Welch, Le Tigre, Freedy Johnston, Neutral Milk Hotel, Emmylou Harris, Sleatter Kinney, and locals like Bonfire Madigan and Mates of State. This stuff has all influenced me.The last several years I've really been focusing on working to become a better songwriter and performer, and attempting to have the songs be less at the whims of my emotional outbursts. I spent the first 27 days of Jan. 2001 writing a song every day, and that's how all of the songs on Birds, Bugs, Bones, and the upcoming Contrary Sanctuary were born.

Over the last few years I've also been tinkering with other instruments, like the bass. I've written quite a few songs on the bass this year. I've also acquired a toy accordion and that's about all I've done with it so far…toy with it. Then there's the trusty little casio with programmed beats & such that I bought for $10 at a thrift store in Tucson. I wrote the song "Skeleton Woman" based around one of those beats.

Oh yeah, I was a bass player and co-screamer in a pop-punk band called Press Clit, for a very short while. Some future musical goals include playing again in a pop punk band, learning classical guitar, recording and producing an album with me playing all the instruments.