The Crossroad convergence

Biography

What is The Crossroad Convergence?

The Convergence of four talented musicians from diverse musical origins, playing iconic covers with a twist and fresh original songs, all with powerful vocals, captivating and unmatched harmonies and a unique acoustic sound.

Sydney

If my mother’s stories are to be believed, I was singing in my crib before I could talk. She woke in the middle of the night because she heard me making sounds and thought I was crying, only to hear the unmistakable melody of “Rainbow Connection” from The Muppet Movie, in the baby talk of a six-month-old, until I sang myself back to sleep.

My passions as a child were figure skating and singing, though I was forbidden to pursue either as a career. I started writing songs in high school, and my AP English teacher suggested I attend the University of Virginia’s Young Writer’s Workshop as a Songwriter. Those three weeks in the summer of 1996 were the first time in my life that I was freely welcomed and accepted as a singer and songwriter. They would also be the last for a very long time.

After one failed start at “normal people” college, and several years of struggling to find any sort of path for myself, I was put in touch with Madame Thilde Beuing, the renowned German Lieder singer and voice teacher, who helped prepare me to audition for the UMKC Conservatory of Music as a Vocal Performance major in January of 2001. I suspect it was desperation that caused my parents to relent and agree to support my first semester after I was accepted. Madame Beuing continued as my primary voice teacher through my three and a half years of study there.

Just prior to my last semester at the Conservatory, life intervened and forced me to change course. With “real life” staring me in the face, and pressure mounting from multiple directions to “make something of myself”, I started over again, re-inventing myself as an IT professional in 2004. I set my dreams aside and built a career that my family would be proud of, that would pay well enough to set me free. It took ten years to get there, through the passing of both of my parents and the demise of my first marriage, but I began the process of rediscovering myself, and rebuilding the dreams I’d left behind.

I met Nikki Ryan Marshall through a circle of mutual friends, and in 2015, she and I with a couple other friends started a band call the Sugar Skull Pinups. We played a couple of gigs around Kansas City, but like so many independent musicians, we lacked the connections, knowledge and funds to grow the band, so when life intervened and took two members in other directions, the band dissolved.

Then, in early 2020, I was newly engaged and looking for ideas for my then-fiancé’s birthday party. Elvendrums happened to be one of his favorite bands from days of yore, and Nikki had recently joined Avatar’s Peaty Bog Water, so I reached out to book them for the party. The pandemic wrecked my plans, both for his birthday party and our wedding that had been scheduled for that spring, and in the midst of all this, Nikki let it slip that “hey, our lead singer just quit.”

Nikki

Grew up in Warsaw, MO, transplanted to Lees Summit, MO in 7th grade. I almost gave up singing after my freshman year of high school (Lees Summit North), but because of our incredible choir director Steve Perry, I stayed in and sang through high school, along with participating in band as a flute/piccolo player. My senior year I took voice lessons from Bill Johnson, who helped grow my solo-singing confidence.

I started my post-high school music performance in 2004 as the Irish whistle player in a group called Fields of Clover. After that I joined Queen’s Gambit as a singer/Irish whistle player, performing Celtic music at renaissance festivals all over the Midwest, and I was with them for about three years.

My steampunk band, External Combustion Orchestra, was formed in 2010, and we still perform in the Midwest at various events such as Steampunk Weekend at Old Cowtown Museum in Wichita, White Hart Renaissance Faire in Hartville, MO, Southwest Missouri Celtic Festival in Buffalo, MO, and Sleepy Hollow Renaissance Festival in Altoona, IA. I play flute, Irish whistle, bass guitar, and ukulele with this group.

In September 2019 I joined Peaty Bog Water as a singer/bass player, and in September 2020 I joined Forever Greye as their keyboardist/back up vocalist.

Joe

I grew up in Massachusetts. My father played mandola in college. When I found it in the basement at about age 8, I taught myself to play. A year later, I got my first six-string. It was easy to incorporate the two new strings. Meanwhile, I sang in church choir until my voice started to change. At 13, I joined my first cover band.

Music was so intriguing to me that I kept after it in various ways. There was no music program at my high school, so my only outlet was playing rock covers with my friends.

At college, I was studying math (another obsession). I needed a fine arts elective, so I chose music. That did it. The next semester, I transferred to another school where musi was offered as a major course of study. I was tutoring other students in music theory after the first semester.

After college, I got into community theater, mostly in the pit. One of those pit bands became a jazz band called Little Big Band. I had some fun with that for a few years, but transferred to California with my day job.

In Cali, and later in Colorado, my music went dormant. Didn’t get involved again until I was almost fifty, when I discovered I could also write. It’s been all go since then. In 2014, I ran into an old friend, Avatar, who was playing at a festival in Merriam. He invited me to sit in at his house because he needed a bass player (l was playing bass in my son’s band at the time.) The guitarist couldn’t make it to a rehearsal, so I broke out my guitar. I haven’t played bass since.

I have built a repertoire of my own songs, but I also love to play others’ original content. In fact, the most enjoyment I get is making other people sound better.

In Crossroad, I get a lot of opportunities to do just that. I have worked with women before but never with two of them. I love this band and am working on harmonies and whole pictures of songs.

I could go on, but the rest of the story has yet to be told. I am in my seventies now and have no intention of leaving it behind.

David

Grew up in St. Peters, MO. In 2nd grade (1978) my parents bought an electric organ. I took some lessons. In 5th grade (1981) I played the oboe in the school band until I graduated from high school (1989). In 9th grade (1985) I joined the marching band, but unfortunately could not play the oboe so I played the cymbals.

In my senior year I took up the bass guitar. After graduation I attended Webster University in St. Louis for Jazz studies. I went there for 2 years and then I made a difficult decision to move to Kansas City to study electronics.

I didn’t play any music for 8 years until (1999) a man named Bill Whipple was putting a hand drumming group together to play at the Kansas City Renaissance Festival. We were called The Druid Drummers. Bill taught me a lot about various types of hand drums and techniques. From African to Middle eastern and Celtic/Irish traditions.

Several years later, Jerry Meyers and Steven Brown were putting together a band where we would have several hand drummers instead of trap set so we could continue to play at Renaissance Festivals. For the first year we called ourselves Whiskey for Breakfast but later changed our name to The Sonic Sidhe Tribe.

Around this same time our good friend Avatar first invited Jerry and Steven over to play music from time to time. They later invited me over. Avatar and I wanted to start performing out. Playing cover tunes and some originals that Avatar wrote during his Elvendrums days. Various band members came and went. In 2012 Steve Brown joined the band and we decided to call ourselves Peaty Bog Water. In 2014, I briefly joined another band called Isan Spirit. We played traditional music from Thailand.

With Peaty Bog Water band members continued to come and go until Avatar wanted to retire from performing and the remaining 4 members decided to stay together to form The Crossroad Convergence.

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