∴ jay toups ∴

:: 3.25.2008 ::

Artists I have presented in concert over the years and in no particular order:

Alison Kraus
Alison Brown
Bela Fleck
Jerry Douglas
Battlefield Band
Mick Maloney
Brian Bowers
Del McCoury Band
Carla Sciaky
Catfish Keith
Cosy Sheridan
Chris Ayer
Dorian Michael
Front Range
Liz Carlisle
Loose Ties
Matt Flinner
Michael McNevin
New Grass Revival
Hot Rize
Special Consensus
Tim O'Brien
Mark O'Connor
Geoff Bartley
Rory Block
Ed Gerhard
Bill Mize
Tony Rice
Peter Ostroushko
Pat Donohue
Pierre Bensusan
Patty Larkin
Christine Lavin and the Bitchin' Babes
Harvey Reid
Michael Gulezian
Jesse Winchester
Bill Morrissey
Bill Staines
Greg Brown
Chuck Pyle
T.R. Ritchie
Chris Proctor
Adrian Legg
Charles David Alexander
Tracy Moore
Michael Manring
Utah Phillips
Doug Wintch
Vassar Clements
David Grisman
Darol Anger
Mike Marshall
Laurie Lewis
Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer
Paul Boruff
Liz Carlisle
Cindy Mangsen & Steve Gillette
John McEuen
Lyle Lovett
Paul Boruff
Peppino D'Agostino
Dan Crary
Zach Parrish
Paul Stowe
Saul Kaye
David Boone
Annabelle Chvostek
Justin Roth
Chris Cunningham

My Sonic DNA

1964: My first guitar lesson when I was a tyke of eight was a washout. Literally. My mother sent me hiking across the cottonfields in Millington, Tennessee with eight dollars to take a lesson from some "classical" guitar teacher she'd heard about. I took the lesson, threw my dinky little plywood geetar into its case and headed back across those cottonfields for home. Straight into a gulley-washer.

So my early creative spark was a little...damp. But I've noodled away at guitars and singing and songwriting for three dozen years since. Along the way, I won the 1990 Telluride Bluegrass Festival "Fingerstyle Guitar" Competition. That same year, Salt Lake City's Private Eye Magazine Readers Poll chose me as Best Acoustic Guitarist. So, a bit of local - regional notoriety ensued...at least among the Mormons, Jack Mormons, Atheists, Agnostics, Jews and Gentiles in Salt Lake where I lived for many years.

Since 1980 I've performed in lots of settings. Concerts. Festivals. Stadiums. Arenas. Bars. Coffeehouses. Resorts. Restaurants. House Concerts. Weddings. Wakes. Company parties. Bar Mitzvahs. All over the western US. On the streets and plazas of towns in Italy, Switzerland, Greece, Poland and Germany.

I make my living as a business and technology writer and web developer, but I've been a magazine editor, publisher, web developer, marketing consultant, non-profit organizer, festival producer, recording engineer, acoustic instrument retailer, music teacher, ship deckhand, and even had a summer-long stint as a yahoo cowboy stuntman in my spring-chicken days back in Gulfport, Mississippi at the long-gone 6 Flags over Mississippi. (My specialty was "Jailbreak" or taking a fake bullet from the sheriff and falling off the jailhouse roof—13 feet to the ground, 6 shows a day.)

So now it's 2005 2006 2007 and I'm writing songs, playing and recording again after a ten-year stint as a writer. Coughing up all that marketing poop for hi-tech clients and their precious audiences has toned up my writing chops, paid off my bills, and hopefully sharpened my snout for what works and what doesn't.

It's easier than ever to record at home, and I have more time to put into material development. As a result I'm woodshedding like a squirrel tearing up cones for the nuts inside and actually enjoying my own creativity for the first time in years. Which is all the reason I need to put it all on de web for easy download by anyone who wants to listen. And I hope you enjoy it too.

Jay's All You Can Eat Music Buffet!
Click to listen or download music I've recorded over the years. It's a paltry selection, but headed in the right direction. More tunes are on the way!

Who do I think I am:
Another white, male baby-boom era singer, songwriter and fingerstyle guitarist [left-handed, not backwards] with a lifelong, if sporadic, fascination with solo acoustic performance. As a live performer, I sing and play fingerstyle country blues, jazz standards, ragtime, new age instrumentals, bluegrass, old time, folk, celtic, acoustic ballads and improvisation.

As far as originals, mostly the "it's about all of us, including you and me and here's what's wrong or right with this or that" approach is what I aspire to. I'm trying to be a shade or two funnier and lighter than in years past, but my issues orientation pretty well assures that future songs aren't headed for wide acceptance.

Judging from the hate mail and anonymous, middle-of-the-night calls from a flatulent coward in Salt Lake City who somehow took deep offense to Howl at the Moon, my 1993 foray into songwriting, this incendiary tell it like you see it path seems to have some potential flame in it!

Do I play clubs and bars or do "house concerts"?
If you would like to host me for an evening of solo performance, just let me know. I promise to behave.

I support other musicians with more than lip service and ripped music.
The Lapwai Lane Shredder's Club is my killer "at home" music performance venue, which seats up to 50 enthusiastic listeners from around the Bitterroot valley where I live.

Sample List of Appearances:

Snowbird Folk and Bluegrass Festival, Snowbird, UT
Deer Valley Folk and Bluegrass Festival, Park City, UT
Telluride Bluegrass Festival, Telluride, CO
Kingsbury Hall, Salt Lake City, UT
Star Hall, Moab, UT
Hal and Mal's, Jackson, MS.
Montana Coffee Traders, Whitefish, MT
Dornans, Jackson Hole, WY
Utah State University, Logan, UT
University of Utah Women's Basketball Team (National Anthem)
Zephyr Club (opener for the late Dr. Timothy Leary)

:: Jay 8:49 AM ::
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