It all started in 1971, actually when I was five years old. I used to listen to my sister Mary play the piano and was fascinated by what she could do. Soon, I was joining her at piano lessons and banging out such hits as Chop Sticks and Three Blind Mice. Several years later I started messing around on a nylon stringed guitar and took a few lessons, but wasn’t too jazzed by the songs I was learning until my brother John came home from college with his own guitar. . Unlike the songs I was playing on the piano or in my guitar lessons, John would play the stuff we’d hear on the radio back in those days Jim Croce, Gordon Lightfoot, America the cool stuff! One day, we hopped in his VW bug and headed off to a local pawnshop, where I picked up my first guitar a Hohner acoustic guitar with steel strings and a hardshell case. John taught me the basics, from Glen Campbell’s Gentle On My Mind to Horse With No Name to The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. If it had three chords, we could play it. John would sing lead vocals and I’d fake my way through some harmonies, and soon we didn’t sound half bad.  Then he was off to school again. I goofed around and learned some more songs while in high school before heading off to Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona in August 1984.

It was Fall, 1986 when I took a break from studying and headed off one Wednesday night with my guitar in one hand and my fake ID in the other. I was off to a little local joint  called The Mad Italian, joined by a couple friends, Eric Anderson and Tom Phelan. Eric and I had recently heard about a weekly open mike show, hosted by local legend Guy Miller,  and had been practicing two songs we planned to perform, The Eagles’ Take It Easy and Eric Clapton’s Wonderful Tonight. I played rhythm and Eric played lead on his Fender Stratocaster, and we didn’t sound bad. Tom heard us practicing one night in my dorm room and introduced himself to me as a lead vocalist.he belted out a few verses and that was good enough for me and Eric, both of us being too shy to take the lead.

Tom didn’t feel much of a need to rehearse, feeling pretty confident in his abilities, until we showed up to the Mad I and saw the place overflowing with people. Not only people, but People, a group of dope smoking hippies playing bizarre instruments that traveled around in a hearse playing folk songs. They were on stage when we walked in, and instantly Tom started regretting decision to skip rehearsal. While Eric and I downed a couple of cold ones to ease the nerves, Tom was getting more nervous by the minute. By the time we got on stage he was really sweating and not the same cocky guy who had walked into my dorm room about a week before. He got about half way through Wonderful Tonight when he completely spaced out on the lyrics, mumbling incoherent lines into the microphone to a slightly confused and very drunk crowd. That was it for his musical career Eric and I shared the  microphone for Take It Easy while Tom regained his composure and headed for the bar. I don’t know how many people were there that night, but I remember the sound of their applause when Eric and I hit that last note and suddenly I knew that I wanted more of this!

A couple weeks later, armed once again with my fake ID, I headed for the east side of town to a little restaurant bar called The Spaghetti Station, where a local singer named Matt Theiss hosted another open mike show. I had practiced a couple of Croce tunes, Operator and Time In A Bottle, and was ready to take the microphone on my own for the first time. Matt did a few tunes to start the show, then a few other performers played their songs while I warmed up with a shot or two of liquid courage and a couple beers. When Matt introduced me to the crowd, I was nervous as I’d ever been, but got through both songs without anyone figuring that out. After the songs, someone else hopped on stage, and Matt stopped me as I made my way back to the bar. He introduced himself, said he was a huge Croce fan, and invited me to practice some tunes with him that week at his dorm. The next week, Matt and I performed together at Spaghetti Station, and after the show he invited me to form a duo with him. Get paid for this? You’re kidding, right?

By December, 1986, we were renting a little house in the middle of a dumpy trailer park out in the woods on Lake Mary Road, learning songs and getting ready for our first official gig as a duo, Theiss and Mulligan, December 31, 1986 at Busters in Flagstaff, AZ. New Year’s Eve at one of the nicest places in town lots of yuppies drinking imported beer,  no hippies or granolas. We had practiced all month and were excited about this gig. Mostly cover songs but also a few originals we had written, including Kino (which later showed up on the Mexico CD).  I was on keyboards and backing vocals, and accompanied Matt on guitar on some songs (I played lead guitar, if you can believe it!)we thought we were sounding damn good but for some reason we didn’t get much notice from the crowd, who pretty much ignored us until a cocktail waitress walked up to Matt right at the emotional high point of a gut wrenching version of Desperado with a note saying, "Your fly is down". Matt burst into laughter, and everyone looked up as he zipped up his pants He recovered with a quick joke, the crowd laughed, finally started having fun, the tips started rolling in, and by the end of the night we had over a hundred bucks each in our pockets and more dates scheduled at Busters for the coming year. Adios 1986!