My life up until now ... This is a Don Conoscenti mini-auto-biography for those interested. No one knows the little details or distorted truths about Don Conoscenti better than me, overall, so I've stepped forward to reveal a few that come to mind. It'll be up to those who witnessed some of these events to fill in the missing blanks and/or correct the many errors...all unintended with sincere apologies attached, thank you. At the age of one I couldn't possibly tell you what was going on in the world. Not mine, not yours, not anyone's. At the age of two I was captured on film with my ear glued to an RCA Victrola in my Gramma Bena and Grampa Vincenzio's basement. My dad, mom, three older brothers (Bob, Bill and Dale), myself, my younger sister (Cindy) ... we all lived in the attic apartment in that house until I was five. All the boys shared one bedroom. We were a wild bunch in a cramped space and having fun rolling everything we possibly could down the stairs front stairs that tumbled down from our living room to the first floor entrance. there was no door at the top of the stairs that i can recall. We rolled toys, balls, potatoes and each other down those stairs. We also climbed up onto tall things and fell or jumped off. There were lots of baths in the kitchen sink. Each of us had a private dinner once a week downstairs with our grandmother. My dad made me laugh a lot back then. He had a second job tending bar at night. One of his sisters, Louise, owned a corner tap in the neighborhood and I'd be down there getting coins from the regulars and playing skittle pool. When I was five my youngest brother, Mike, came along and we moved into our own house across the street. It looked like a big, yellow barn...fittingly. A year or so before we moved into the big yellow barn my folks gave me a ukulele. I never took to it and gave it to one of the neighbor kids. That was perceived as rude and ungrateful behavior by the adults in my house. Jimmy Sullivan was a stocky little Irish Catholic thug and we were probably in 4th grade when he brought over an electric bass guitar with one string broken and three others out of tune. He wanted me to play it in his band. My first band experience. It didn't fly. In 7th grade my mom scared up some money from her second job and got me a used drum kit. I was dreaming drums and motorcycles. I drummed in a band with Joe Messineo and Billy Perchak. We were one of the two bands in St Pascal's elementary school on the northwest side of Chicago. My brother Mike tells me that we were called the Symphonic Experience. Big name for such a small band. We only knew two or three songs. I'm guessing that at least one of them was the full 17 minute version of In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (it actually means "In the Garden of Eden"...or Life) by the Iron Butterfly. The drummer in the other band at St. Pascal's was this cool guy with Beatle boots and a blue sparkle Ludwig kit. I had sneakers and a red sparkle Sears drum kit. He got all the girls. When i graduated 8th grade my cousin Butch gave me an electric guitar. I wrote an instrumental piece with two chords that I was pretty happy with and played it for everyone at my graduation party. I also wrote and directed two plays in grade school. One was performed in class ... a take off on the Johnny Carson show. The other was performed in the gymnasium for the whole grade. Might've been the whole school. It was called "Hell's Angels on Wheels". We chased each other around on tricycles and kicked a lot of ass. The sound track was large and ominous...fittingly. Kindergarten was fantastic. I had two sweeties who lived next door to one another and the three of us got along famously and walked to school and back together each day. It was a tough year to follow. First grade was a painfully drastic transition. I was literally dragged, kicking and screaming, on the first day. High School was the huge chunk of life for me that it was for most people but I was pretty anxious to be done with the structures and politics of formal education and happy to finally graduate and hit the road. I seriously considered running away from home in grade school. My plan was to leave in the spring. I'd ride my bicycle up to Wisconsin. I thought Wisconsin was a wilderness of short, green grass and there would probably be wild horses there. My catholic education kept me out of jail, but the nuns, brothers and former marines that were our teachers and coaches were a heavy handed and short-tempered bunch for the most part. I had a total of two best friends growing up, but not at the same time. Bob Buszack was the first and then Jimmy Raddatz. We had a gang sort of thing going with Jimmy. He was the smartest and toughest kid in the neighborhood. Even the older kids respected Jimmy. He could take anybody in a fight. Jimmy didn't have to fight much. I was always in fights. We ran in packs on bicycles or on foot and were always in trouble and running from the cops. Chicago's finest. They could rarely catch us. We knew all the yards and just kept jumping fences till we'd lose them. Three fences usually did the job. We were petty thieves, vandals, outlaws. But we were also nice to old people and little kids. We didn't carry weapons and hadn't discovered drugs yet. We all gave up our small time criminal activities after grade school, for the most part. In high school Jimmy Raddatz joined the symphonic band. They got out one period earlier than everyone else. I was shocked that he did it at first, but then I joined the band, too. It was great getting out early. They had too many drummers in the band already. As a second choice i wanted to play trumpet but would've had to buy my own ... lots of dough. They were desperate for flute players and bribed me with a heavy discount on a flute and the first chair position. I grew into the first chair position and loved high school band. Mark Williams was the captain and my closest friend in band. He was also a gifted musician and a great clarinet player. He later showed up on MTV and on the cover of rolling stone as 'Mars' Williams in a band called the Waitresses (I Know What Boys Like").  I also remember the two of us and Richy Melkowitz, who played tuba, getting high and marching in the rain in downtown Chicago for some big holiday. We walked right in front of Mayor Richard J Daley, Sr in silly costumes. We were madmen. Our band instructor was a mad man. Tom Werheim. We idolized the guy. Still do. Short, tough, profane with greased back hair and skinny black ties. We tried to get him to go with the current style but he'd cuss us out and say that he went in and out of style every ten years...so why should he change anything when he just had to wait it out? This has proven to be very true. He also told me it was crazy to do folk music as a career. He was a prophet. He carved us new rear ends all the time...aAnd he could play every one of the instruments in the band. Funny guy, too. Wrote for television in Los Angeles, popped pills and played in the jazz clubs. Or maybe it was that he copped trills and swayed in the jazz clubs. Guess he had decided to raise a family and get a "real job". Otherwise we couldn't figure out why he was there in the basement band room of Holy Cross High School with us every morning. He was more of an outcast than any of us could've hoped to be. After I had graduated high school and hit the road I carried that flute rolled up in a road atlas for several years. I still play a little flute on most of my albums. I tried the track team in high school. Became a pole-vaulter. For real. What was i thinking? First sign of brain damage right there. I switched to wrestling and that stuck. Loved it. For three years I wrestled first string. Always won the team matches to go to the meets, but I would get completely freaked out by my opponent hissing and glaring at me. I think in three years I only won two or three of my matches. It was pathetic. My dad was trying to be a good dad by coming to watch. What can you say to your dad after you get creamed? I didn't say anything and neither did he. We still enjoy quiet times together ... under different circumstances. Bernie Botheroyd was my hero and wrestling coach. He looked like Robert Redford but lots taller. He said I had all the moves but lacked the killer instinct. Meanwhile I was jamming with Ricky Melkovitz's band. They wanted me in t6he band so i could play the flute parts on some Jethro Tull songs. Aqualung. Cross Eyed Mary. Big tunes at the time. And I had my first motorcycle. A Honda 150cc dream. Red with flared fenders and white walls. Bad ass little bike. Ricky crashed it one day after wrestling practice in the school parking lot ... Which was basically a paved, oval racetrack. We thought so anyway. Then I was all of a sudden 17, graduated from high school and on my way to California to hang out with my older brothers who were out there in the military. I ended up in San Jose working as a surgical orderly cleaning up after operations and doing other lovely things. The doctors were jerks. The nurses were... great. My favorite one was dating an astronaut. Lucky him. I worked there six months and went to Hawaii to learn to body surf and hang out for a month. Then I came back and started to hitchhike around the country and get into all kinds of madness with strange people from everywhere. I remember one day meeting another wanderer at an interchange in the middle of nowhere. He didn't have any shoes. I had two pairs for some reason. I gave one pair to him and we were brothers forever. Only knew each other for ten minutes but I have never forgotten him. Met a lot of old timers when i would jump the occasional freight train. It's a tough way to travel but more direct and more private than hitchhiking. When I was a kid the tracks cut right through a big cemetery near us. We'd steal our parents' smokes and go out there and hang out with the hobos who had a little camp there. Used to see hobos walking along railroad tracks all around Chicago back then. They were mysterious. So were the garbage men. They walked the streets whistling and singing and banging the metal cans up against the back of the trucks. Real noisy. Way before Stomp or Blue Man Group. I thought they were Gypsies. They acted like Gypsies. I truly wanted to be a garbage man when I grew up. Ask my mom. The only time we ever took a big vacation and flew in an airplane was the summer we went to visit our relatives in Las Cruces, New Mexico. It was the desert! There were tarantulas, black widows, roadrunners, rattlesnakes. I felt something powerful out there in the desert and was never quite the same because of it. I live in the desert now. Ask my mom.I tried to become an expatriate when i was 19 years old. I went to bogota, columbia. I had fifty dollars cash and a cheap acoustic guitar and could speak enough spanish to get started. But i was stopped and detained at customs in the bogota airport because they were convinced i was a drug dealer. Even then you couldn't start a drug dealership with fifty dollars. The pilot who flew the plane i came in on stepped in on my behalf and they let me into the country under his recognizance. I stayed with a good friend and his family. This friend had been in chicago for a period of time teaching at my high school and had become a close friend of my family's. This was not the best timing on my part. I had recently fallen in love back in the states and was captivated by the idea of playing guitar and singing songs ... Every day ... All the time. Those were two of the longest and most interesting weeks of my life. Poverty, political activism, revolution, danger ... dancing and singing in the streets ... i learned a lot. I ended up back in boulder after that. But not before the border police in miami got a pice of me on my way back into the united states. Nice guys. Really really nice. And friendly. Really really friendly. I'd lived in boulder the year before my trip to south america. A very different boulder from the one we now know. I bought a used yamaha acoustic guitar from a girl who was leaving town. And i lived in a boarding house, became a vegetarian, learned to chant and did some yoga and meditation. I also did a lot of drugs. Lots. There was a guy on my floor who'd just gotten back from a winter in the himalayas. He had hung out in a cave, barefoot all winter. He was pretty weird. A real pain in the ass, actually. He made his girlfriend work at mcdonalds to pay the bills. Ram dass was in town teaching that summer at naropa institute. He had just published "be here now". Cool book. Cool time to be in boulder. I learned to play some more chords and wrote some pretty horrible songs. Kept writing em, though. Hundreds of em. They've gotten better. not long after that i was hitchhiking through indiana and this brother picked me up in a vw bug. We stopped to pee at a truck stop. He left the bathroom before i did and said he'd meet me in the lobby. He lied. Everything i owned was in a backpack or lying beside it in that vw bug and rolling away from me somewhere through seemingly endless corn fields near indianapolis. I looked up the road...down the road. He was gone and he wasn't coming back. And i had the most joyous sense of liberation. True story. I actually hooted and jumped around. That shit had gotten very very heavy to carry around. Clothes, books, flute, road atlas, poncho, guitar, dulcimer, harmonicas. I was all of a sudden weightless. I had my driver's license, a few bucks and some prayer beads in my pocket. Because something had told me to take those things out of my pack during that ride.After about two weeks i was feeling some attachment to some of those missing things. I had gotten physically addicted to playing the guitar. I went back to chicago. Worked and saved and bought a martin. Eventually i traded that martin for a mandolin and some cash so i could buy an instrument called "guistar" made by my friend, fred carlson, up in plainfield, vermont. It was fred's third creation. While i was in chicago this time around steve goodman was still alive and had a folk club called "somebody else's troubles". John prine had just signed to a major label thanks to steve. I went to see steve play just before he died of cancer. He looked happy and he was eating a cucumber on stage and jamming with his friends. I liked him a lot. I went to the hootenannies (open mics) at "somebody else's troubles" and "the earl of old town". There was also a cool coffeehouse over on lincoln avenue. I played the hoots there, too. One night i met and had coffee with homesick james. He was elmore james' cousin. He was an old black man ... blues royalty ... and i was having coffee with him. People back then weren't very taken with my esoteric, hippie-hobo, folk vignettes. I set them to guitar parts i copied lovingly from mississippi john hurt. Loved all those delta guys. Homesick james took an interest in me and that was some encouragement.I grew up in the late 50's and early 60's listening to frank sinatra, bing crosby, benny goodman, lou monte, frankie lane, dean martin, roy rogers, gene autrey, little stevie wonder, the jackson five, the supremes, the temptations, roger miller, marvin gaye and comedy records by bill cosby and redd fox. Then came the brits: the hollies, beatles, stones. And we midwest boys in high school all loved hard rock, of course. I worshipped led zeppelin, pink floyd, and the who. Quadraphoenia got me thru high school. My brother, mike, still has my quadraphoenia cassettes. He's keeping them for me. My brother mike is an angel. Cleverly disguised, too. All my brothers, my sister, my mom, my mom's mom, and my dad are cleverly disguised angels. So were the allman brothers as far as my friends and i were concerned. We partied to their records in p.t. Barnum's basement. He lived halfway down the next block. We started drinking shitty beer about that time, too. We could get local bar flies to buy us beer if we were nice to em and paid a service fee. It was a mutually good affair. Times were less complicated back then. Not so much heroin and homelessness. Political correctives were still relatively unknown. then i moved to vermont. My brother, dale, was already there. Still is. He said i'd love it and had to come check it out immediately. I did and he was right. I was seduced. I went back to chicago and packed my things. My friend, owl, sold me my first car. A '64 rambler american. Tan. Gorgeous. Two weeks later i was living in vermont. I was twenty something. I fell in love a lot in vermont. With good reason. And i started performing and recording and having bands. Had a blues duo with arnold carbone. "little arnold and chicago don". Arnold had/has an amazing black classical music collection and he immersed me in thelonius monk, coltrane, minghus, art farmer, dizzy gillespie, all the delta guys, all the chicago guys and even some of the philly and st louis guys. Springsteen was on the charts with his earliest stuff. Marley was changing my world ... everyone's world and i went to jamaica for a week to find out what was up with all that. John lennon was coming out with his first record in five years ... And his last. The pretenders, the clash, joe jackson and elvis costello were putting out their first records. The kinks were  in high gear.Arnold carbone still lives in vermont. Like my brother, dale. For a while they worked together making flavors at ben and jerry's. I also worked at ben and jerry's. When they first started. I had sold the rambler and was living in a '66 ford econoline van. I loved it. And i scooped for/and with ben and jerry during their first summer. After the shop closed for the day i'd get my guitar out and a fellow named don rose would come by and play the piano that was near the front door. Blues and ice cream. They were good times...hard times. I starved in vermont. Lived on rice except for when i was at dale and lorita's place or up at maplehill community where i lived and worked with kids off and on. Maplehill community was/is three miles up a dirt road outside of plainfield. Plainfield was a town of 800 people then. Might still be. Home of goddard college and bread and puppet theatre. That was a very interesting time to be in central vermont. While in vermont my first real band happened. The zuchinni brothers band. I was fixing the toilet paper holder in the "horn of the moon caf" when a woman named susan stanaway introduced herself and said that her drummer boyfriend wanted to start a band with me. It flew. We were the grateful dead of central vermont. All dance all the time. Primal and sweaty. When we broke up two years later a lot of people were pissed at us. It had become therapy for a lot of folks. We were a wild, hard playing, hard partying three-piece band. Michael bean did lights and a long series of posters and made sure i didn't starve altogether or go completely homeless. Don bishop did an early series of posters before that. They were all brilliant works of pop art. Wish i had all of em. I actually have one or two. Mike coughlin played drums and also sang and wrote tunes. Reagan meyer played some of the coolest bass i've ever heard and sang harmony. His brother, robin, was the crew and bill flanagan was the sound and production guy and tried his best to teach me some business sense. I sang, wrote tunes, played electric guitar, fronted and booked the band. It lasted about two years. Bands typically last six months to two years. This is my own figure based upon years of personal research.There were many other band attempts after that ... and then i took up an offer to go play in a duo on martha's vineyard. I was told that the gigs were booked and the money was steady so i sold off my extra things and drove down there with $27 to last me the two weeks of rehearsals until the money would start cascading into my life. I was living in another ford econoline van. This one was red. When i got to the vineyard my duo partner informed me that he got a better deal working as an electrician and that he let all the gigs go. I was screwed. I scanned some local bulletin boards for work and got a job on a framing crew. I hung out in the bars at night and met some local musicians and fell in with them and the sidemen they were bringing in from boston. This was a real lively bunch. It was madness. I also played electric guitar in an otherwise all black soul band called the "taylor made band". The three taylor brothers sang like the o'jays and they played bass, rhythm guitar and drums. I played steely dan induced lead guitar. It was very cool. then i ended up in boston. Drummer rick iannuzzi and guitarist reeves gabrels were finishing up at berkeley school of music and had been coming to the vineyard to play with kevin mckluskey and michael branden, who are still good buddies living in boston and connecticut, respectively. Ricky and reeves talked me into living on their couch and starting an original band, which we dubbed "small cognito". It's a take off of my name. So was the zuchinni brothers band name. Long stories. Long name. So in this new band i would write the songs and be the front man. Ricky and reeves would figure out the rest. There were lots of drugs and alcohol. We had plenty of fun but didn't get much figured out. We did a lot of recording up on maple hill at fred wilbur's house. Reeves eventually moved to london and started a long musical collaboration with david bowie then moved back to boston and new york. I ran into him on a sidewalk on the lower east side one evening. He looked good. Ricky is still one of the greatest drummers i know and plays blues and funk in florida. He has always looked good. then i ended up in key west with my hair cut short and dyed orange by my friend peg tassey. I'm not sure how good i looked. But i was certainly stood out in a crowd. I was hired to play bass in a folk trio with geoff rutledge and warren b. Sometimes we could get quint lange to come play drums and percussion with us. Those were my favorite gigs with the trio. Great guys. After the folk trio had ran it's course i had another version of "small cognito" assembled in key west with swain noro (aka craig spitzer) on bass and elliot deplasco from new york on drums. We became the house band at sloppy joe's. We stayed on about a year and shredded the place. We were a great electric power trio. My third trio at this point. Many more trios were to come. We performed some strange originals and interesting covers. We mixed in funk, fusion and jazz. We did crazy stuff on stage. Off stage, too. We sat in with all the visiting bands. I would play solos with a wireless unit while riding around the bar on one of the bouncer's shoulders. Kenny mcgee. Kenny now lives near indianapolis and has been keeping an eye out for my clothes, books, flute, poncho, guitar, dulcimer and harmonicas. at sloppy joe's i met the first of many atlanta musicians i came to know and love. I met bassist/writer/guitarist/producer dede vogt. Lucky me. I also met ben mickler. Great drummer. He, swain noro and i ended up later forming another version of "small cognito" in atlanta. Then i got hired away to wisconsin by a guy we all knew as "the big mac". Mac (mike mckearn) fronted the very best band that we ever saw come through sloppy joe's. 'Sleeper". They were legendary. I was invited to help arrange the material, be mac's onstage foil and play electric guitar in mac's new band, "tug mumbo". I loved mac and everyone in tug mumbo. But the band went on hiatus after one year. I left to form another short lived, but very cool, version of "small cognito" in the san francisco bay area with swain noro. We did a few shows and mac called me back to wisconsin to play in a second version of "tug mumbo". I was love sick for my ex girlfriend in wisconsin and i went back. Swain was not amused. Back in "tug mumbo" matthew goodwin took over the guitar slot. Billy braatz drummed. Mike ritz played keys. Dick kubely was the original bass player but he had left so i took over the bass slot. When that band broke up i moved to atlanta. So did matthew and billy. Billy and i have played together off and on ever since. We were even in one of matthew's bands. We are psychically linked when we play together. The band thing eventually became impossible in atlanta. The thriving club scene at the time was killed dead by new drinking and drunk driving laws. I got so burned out on it anyway that i quit playing altogether for four years. Got a day gig. Went to night school. Studied tool and die making. Went on some dates. Got married. Bought and renovated a house. Studied spiritual and martial arts. Trained to be a monk of sorts. Went to japan, briefly. I loved it. I was sure this was my home and wanted to stay but my wife didn't. We got unmarried. I left the house with her and moved into a little studio apartment on ponce de leon in decatur. I didn't go back to japan, but i did accidentally go into a train depot turned folk club called the "freight room" one night. I was actually looking for a place called "trackside tavern". The freight room had an open mic run by cindy craven and tom wolf. Cindy told me i should come play the open mic. I did. They booked me to play a wednesday night. I started to play out again. Within a few months i was fully active and recording again. Eddie owen was managing trackside tavern and booking acoustic acts. Interesting acoustic acts. It was there that i ran into dede vogt again. I also met caroline aiken and shawn mullins that same night. Marty kearns produced my first album called "carved in stone". He had been staff producing for "db records" which had first recorded a lot of acts that went on to become famous ... like r.e.m. The indigo girls were honing their craft in eddie's place and had taken a lot of notes from locals like caroline aiken and gerard mchugh. I did, too. There was also kristian bush and andrew hyra. They later became "billy pilgrim". "lenny" was a really cool band from athens. Bill mallonee and the "vigilantes of love" were also a cool band from athens.  Matthew kahler. Uncle mark reynolds and ashley wilson. The wagon wheels.  Drivin and cryin. Michelle malone. Kristen hall. Catbird seat. Uncle green. The sattelites. The swimming pool cues. Glenn phillips band, cameo, arrested development, the dixie dregs. This was a very cool time to be in atlanta and i learned a lot from all of these guys and became one of them. This is the scene that most shaped what i do today. I made several cd's in dede vogt's studio. All the acoustic folks gigged and recorded together and hung out at eddie's place and went running in lullwater park and sat around the bar at eddie's after close singing and drinking. When eddie opened "eddie's attic" things really got going. Big free-for-all benefit concerts and live recording marathons. Travis mcnabb (currently drumming with 'better than ezra') and i would always try see who could play in the most bands at these events. I loved being a part of that. The best music scene anywhere as far as i could tell. Eddie was my mentor and is still one of my very best friends. I met my very very best friend at eddie's place. Ellis paul needed a place to stay and he was starting to come down to atlanta to get a dose of what was going on there. A mutual friend, jon svetkey, hooked him up with me. We took him into our little scene and he has been altered by it ever since. in or around 1994 i released my second cd (third full album) called "beneath your moon". I started to tour full time. I gave up my apartment in decatur and went to live in the mountains of virginia for one year with an exotic and talented redheaded musician. I've been touring full time and living in various parts of the south ever since. In the year 2000 i was home for two and a half weeks. When people ask how much touring i do i tell them that. A also tell em i didn't unpack my bags for ten years. This is true. no record label, established agency or management team has ever accepted my solicitations in the folk music industry. There's no business like show business. I have never worked harder or stayed busier ... Or loved my life more ... Or hated it less, at times. I've made a lot of records. Played a large variety of instruments on lots of other people's records. Produced other people's records. Won awards. Toured with my friends. Consulted and taught songwriting, music and music biz related classes and workshops. I have squeezed in some rock climbing, camping, trail running, mountain biking, road biking, foot racing, yoga, martial arts (brown belt in shao-lin kung fu), and various spiritual practices. Have had some very esoteric and disciplined training.I live mostly under the radar. I tour all the major cities and live for those tour stops that take me out into the middle-of-nowhere america. I lived in oklahoma for two years and loved it. Still do. Then i lived in the desert in southern colorado near the new mexico border. A town called alamosa in the san luis valley. If you've ever been thru the valley you'll know why i love it. Once i stopped by my insurance agent's office. He's a rancher and paints a lot of cool cowboy scenes. His paintings are all over the wall in that little office. His assistant was crying when i got there. I offered to come back another time but she said to come on in. The boss had died a half-hour before. We all knew he was gonna go sometime soon because he was pretty ill. I hung out and looked at his paintings longer than i usually do. Which is pretty long cos i like em. Alamosa's a good place for people like me. But i'm just as likely to end up anywhere the wind blows. I intend for it to be in the desert. Spirit grabs me up by the scruff of the neck and off i go. So who knows where i'll end up next? Maybe right here where i am. I hear my name whispered a lot out in the desert mountain places. I know i'm home there and the spirits and animals treat me very well. I love manhattan, new york, chicago, l.a. And all that, too. But i'm at home in the desert. And in japan.I am so far producing all my own cd's and i also have some videos out. I release all this stuff on my own "cogtone" label. I'm proud of my work even if i'm not always as satisfied as i want to be with the time and money available to spend on it. But it's all about love so i do my best and live with the end result. This is all i have to say about my life up until now. Thanks for listening. Doncon.  ("my life" up until 2001 was written during a six day period in rollinsville and alamosa colorado). TO BE CONTINUED