B. J. York
was born in '52, and raised in the bowl of California, in
the small town of Porterville, a ten minute bike-ride from
the Sierra foothills. There, my sister and I grew up in music
and dance. Dad was a science teacher and played the
clarinet. Mom was a school nurse and played the piano and
sang. Through my father's eclectic musical tastes ( Carmina
Burana to Brubeck), my mother's voice and warmth, through
choruses, and a few guitar lessons, a garage band and some
vocal performance study in college, through the joys and
sorrows and travels of a marriage that ended in friendship
and brought me here to Pittsburgh, and through all the other
"collected treasures" of living, these songs, these pieces
of play, reminiscence, and dawning awareness, have come to
be. They continue to haunt and form into light. They
continue to flood my mind and the page with more images and
questions.