Smiling Jack has been writing and singing his songs in a career that spans five decades and three continents…from New York City to Vancouver, from Florida to New Jersey, from Madrid to Australia, from London to Hamburg.
His music has changed and evolved with the times and the places he has lived: folk music in the sixties in New York, folk and rock in Vancouver in the seventies and eighties, country music in Florida in the early nineties and blues in Europe for the last 22 years. On street corners, at arts and craft faires, in concert halls, bars and house concerts, the audiences have been warm and responsive, giving Jack a place in their hearts and minds and earning him the chance to play at Blues Festivals on three continents as well as being the opening act for some of the biggest names in the business including B.B. King, John Mayall, Bonnie Raitt, Charlie Musselwhite, Johnny Clyde Copeland, John Hammond, Jr, and the Reverend Gary Davis. His recordings, ranging from the Ahh Capella CD with Party Fever in Vancouver through This Blue Before (produced by jazz guitarist Pat Coleman with an all star cast of Canadian musicians) to the acclaimed acoustic project Now That Truth Was Gone with David Gwynn, have been played on the radio all over the world. Now That Truth Was Gone was named as one of the Top Ten Blues records released in Europe in 2012 by the Underground Blues Network and his second CD with David Gwynn, Simple Pleasure, is the logical succesor to Now That Truth Was Gone, an eclectic mix of many different blues styles and topics, or as Jack puts it, “Blues in the Big Box
