The Glen Campbell Moment
It all began with a television show that would change everything. The Glen Campbell Good Time Hour was my Beatles moment—that spark that ignites a lifelong passion. I asked my mom for a guitar and wanted to learn golf, two pursuits that would interweave through my life in the most unexpected ways.
My passion for golf led me to work at a driving range as a teenager, where fate arranged an encounter that would echo through the decades. I was caddying nine holes for a singer who would soon be knocked off the longest-running spot on the Billboard charts by Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon.
A Lesson in Kindness
I was supposed to caddy eighteen holes, but at the turn, I realized it was four o'clock—when I could play golf for free. When I mentioned this in front of the singer and my instructor Ben, Ben told me NOT to put down the bag.
The singer came over, took the bag off my shoulder, and spoke those words that revealed his character. This singer continued saying hello every time he saw me, but my golf instructor remained pissed for six weeks. Little did I know I was witnessing the grace of Johnny Mathis.
The Ice House and True Love
At the Ice House open mic night in Pasadena, I performed one of my first original songs. Through songwriting, I wound up with the girl—Mary Sue. The first time I invited her to my apartment for dinner, I had also invited friends to play cards.
As Mary Sue arrived, I was headed to the store. "Where are you going?" she asked. "To get silverware," I replied. "I only have one knife, one fork, and one spoon." She looked down, bit her lip, and tried not to laugh.
That moment of vulnerability, that honest admission of having so little, somehow became the foundation of everything that followed.
Building a Life Together
Mary Sue never wanted to live her entire life in LA. So in 1981, I loaded my truck with her belongings and drove her to Berkeley. She returned later that year, and we moved in together on April 1, 1982—our unofficial anniversary, April Fool's Day.
After mailing demo tapes around the country with no success, I took a break from music. For the entire year of 1984, I played just one song on my guitar. But music called me back. In 1985, I took another songwriting class, wrote "The Trouble With a Kiss," and connected with Sunny, who cut demos for me.
The Coincidental Gregory
Mary Sue and I married in 1983; our children were born in 1987 and 1991. By 1994, we moved to Northern California and started over. I slowly assembled a home studio and kept writing songs.
A few years before Y2K, I accepted an IT job. My boss was also named Gregory James—born on 5-9 while I was born on 5-19. My wife and daughter were Mary and Zoe; his wife and daughter were Mary and Zoe. The first time we had Chinese food together, we opened fortune cookies with the same lotto numbers inside.
Life seemed to be writing its own songs of synchronicity.
Full Circle Moments
Mary Sue landscaped our property, and I built a deck that became a stage. For my mom's 90th birthday, I sang "Gentle on My Mind" on our deck, reminding her that she bought me my first guitar because of that song. A partygoer told me he worked on a TV show in the 1960s where that was the theme song.
In 2007, I was unlocking my bicycle at the Sebastiani Theater when the manager asked me to run sound for a holiday variety show. That's how I met Tom Smothers—who, I later learned, produced The Glen Campbell Good Time Hour. The circle was completing itself in ways I never could have imagined.
Freezer Performances
Mary Sue and I traveled to Bellingham to visit our son Spencer and his wife. They got us a paid gig at the food co-op—performing on top of a freezer with no safety rails, next to the produce section.
Sometimes the most humble stages provide the most authentic connections.
Fifty-One Years Later
I started songwriting to make money, but after the first ten years provided no income, I kept writing because it worked out my brain worms—it was therapy. The pandemic provided the perfect storm to finally release my songs.
Fifty-one years after caddying for Johnny Mathis, Mary Sue and I drove to Sacramento to watch him perform a nearly thirty-song set with a twenty-piece orchestra, never forgetting a lyric or missing a beat. When I was fourteen, walking down that fairway with Johnny Mathis, I knew he was famous, but I had no idea HOW talented he is.
It all began with one fork, one knife, and one spoon. And one song that made Mary Sue laugh—and the rest is history.