About

My first professional writing job, several decades ago, was to review a show by Scottish comedian Billy Connolly – an assignment I got because of the Scottish origins of my name. Since then, I’ve written for newspapers, magazines, and online media, in addition to writing three books about music.

I was the music writer at the daily Vancouver Sun newspaper from 1979 to 1981, and the music writer at the daily Province newspaper in 1984. I wrote feature articles, concert reviews, and record reviews, and interviewed numerous artists along the way. In between and after those gigs, I was the event listings editor and music writer for Monday, a weekly newspaper in Victoria, BC, and freelanced for several now-deceased Canadian music publications.

I then took a detour into academia, where my experience in writing on deadline, and my skills at collecting and synthesizing information, turned out to be extremely useful. In 2015, after an unlikely series of events (described in the introduction to my book Song Book), I returned to music writing.

I’m currently a contributing writer for Shindig! magazine, for Record Collector magazine, and for the website PopMatters. I was a contributing writer at the website Please Kill Me (RIP).

My book Song Book: 21 Songs from 10 Years (1964-1974) was released by New Haven Publishing in 2018. My second book, Mixtape: 21 Songs From 10 Years (1975-1985), was released by New Haven in 2022. My third book, Fountains of Wayne, was released by J-Card Press in 2025.

I blog about music at Writing On Music, and about my academic interests (work and organizations) at All About Work. I’m on X/Twitter and Bluesky as @writingaboutmusic.

I live near Vancouver, Canada.

For writing or editing commissions, you can contact me here.