detail, poster for terra incognita

By the time Katie and I re-formed Terra Incognita and began pursuing a serious career in "alternative" music, the desert had taken hold of me and I'd returned to nature as the primary inspiration for my work. All the songs I wrote for Terra Incognita and Wickiup expressed my fascination with prehistory, ecology, geology, evolution, and indigenous ways of life.

In retrospect, however, after years of singing these songs to audiences of drunken bohemians in urban nightclubs, I realized that there were probably audiences and venues that were better suited to songs about meteorites and extinct horses. That point was made for me when Wickiup performed at Oakland's Festival of the Lake and as the adult audience drifted away, more and more children clustered around us. Between songs, they actually asked questions!