John was born and raised in the Boston area. He moved in the early 1990s to Portland Oregon to pursue his education and a career in music. After graduating with degrees in both German and History from Portland State University, he spent much of the following decades as a working musician, recording artist, and guitar teacher. A singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, John has released 7 albums of original songs and continues to write and record while working as a freelance session musician and mix engineer.

Alongside music, John’s other great passion is the German language. After graduating with a BA in German, John has diligently continued his study of the language in an effort to reach true native speaker level. He is particularly interested in modern slang usage, as well as colloquial and idiomatic speech. John’s interest in German extends well beyond the language and into the areas of German history, literature, art, poetry, music, and philosophy. His fascination with all things German was a matter of much curiosity to his French parents.

John moved to Sacramento in the summer of 2023 when his wife was hired as a post-doc researcher at UC Davis. In addition to his duties as a teacher’s assistant at the Turnverein, he works as a bookseller at Beer’s Books. John has a wide variety of interests including history, politics, cinema, literature, travel, hiking, and tennis. As a native Bostonian, he is a passionate fan of the Red Sox, Celtics, and Patriots. He lives in Land Park with his wife of 15 years, who loves to enlist him as a fieldwork assistant throughout Nevada and California on her various monarch butterfly research projects.