I was born in 1950 and like millions of my generation I took up the guitar and banjo at the intersection of the American folk music revival and the British rock invasion. I played in jug bands, rock bands, and jams throughout my teens and early twenties. Soon after, my focus shifted to classical music and the cello and after a brief career working for several New York magazine publishers I launched Strings, the magazine for players and makers of bowed stringed instruments in 1986.

My love of roots and rock music was still very much alive, of course, and then a curious thing happened. In 1989 I damaged two disks in my low back and it became very painful to sit and play the cello. My friend David Leishman loaned me his Gibson J-45 so I’d have a way to make music standing up. Suddenly I was back playing the songs of my teen years.

My rekindled enthusiasm for roots and rock met my entrepreneurial instincts and the result was Acoustic Guitar magazine. I had the good fortune to team up with a similarly motivated editor, Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers. And the amazing luck to publish our first issue in 1990 when the acoustic music revival was really heating up, witness the success of artists like Tracy Chapman, Suzanne Vega, and Indigo Girls, the meteoric rise of MTV Unplugged, and the growth of indy record labels specializing in roots, Americana, and singer-songwriter genres.

Much has changed in the business of media since those days, but the popularity of acoustic music among both artists and audiences endures. And will for many years to come. I’m grateful to play a small part.