When Susie and I moved to Humboldt County in 2001, we only knew one person in the area, and he was not a musician. I started going to an open mic at a local restaurant/bar. There are tons of talented musicians in Humboldt County, but none of them were showing up to the particular local place I was going to. I kept going nevertheless and

one night these 2 guys show up and they were great. One guy sang and played guitar, and the other guy played harmonica on some songs, percussion on others, and 2 Irish flutes in harmony on others.

They were received warmly and were the first competent players I had seen in the weeks I'd been going. After their set, I made it a point to introduce myself. Joe Kieney, the guitar player/singer and his friend Dan had previously toured together as "Joe King and Dan Sing", but Dan had moved across the country and was just visiting, and left a day or so after I met them. Joe was playing by himself at a local event, and Susie and I came out to see him. I found out that all of the songs he sang were originals. I told him of my plans to build a studio. Joe was one of 2 volunteers that pitched in for a couple of days when we were building it. After the studio was completed, I initially played on and produced a song of Joe's "Seas Are Calm" for a compilation album benefiting a local DA's campaign to fight his unjust recall. After that, Joe and I started getting together on Wednesday nights, and recording. We almost always just ran a "2 Track Live" recording of the night, and we generated about a thousand hours of music over the next 10 years. We have joked about releasing a 10 cd set……of each of Joe's songs, as we have at least a hundred recordings of many of them. 

     In 2013, we decided to play out. We played at The Logger Bar in Blue Lake, a few miles from where we live for Joe's birthday and people liked it. We decided to add a bass player. I had engineered 2 or 3 albums for a local band, Magnolia. Their stand-up bass player, Kevin Johnson came to mind, but Magnolia was very busy and I thought it would be a long shot. I gave him a call, and found out that Magnolia had just broken up after many years.

     The rest is history. Kevin joined Kingfoot and the band continues to this day, although not anywhere as busy as we were for the first 5 years. We played the Logger Bar so many times that we got a line in a local play saying that we play there "every day". We played regularly at The Redwood Curtain Brewery, and recorded a live album there. We have played for environmental groups and for the Cannabis Cup event. We've played at a number of festivals locally and were the house band for a couple of theater productions at

Del Arte in Blue Lake. We released our first cd, "Tracking The Beast" in 2013 and our live album, "Kingfoot Live At The Redwood Curtain" in 2015. 

      Kingfoot has subsequently recorded 3 studio albums that Dominic Romano and I produced, "Steely", "Borderland", and "Moscow", all containing songs written by Joe Kieney (except for my train song in the middle of "Whiskey Bottle" on the Borderland album). Our style is about 60-75% instrumental, built around Joe's chord progressions.

Kingfoot lives on.