In spring of 1963 Roger got his first guitar, a Kay archtop bought for $18 from a Philadelphia pawn shop. Armed with a printed chord chart and a pitch pipe for a tuner, and no small measure of desire and persistence, Roger’s music career officially was launched.

Fast-forwarding a few years, as a Penn State student, Roge performed as a solo acoustic act at coffeehouses and also with a core of musicians known around State College, PA as The Jam Factory. Through his work at radio stations WHR, WDFM, and WQWK (this last being a real commercial station where Roger held a part time job) Roger built a reputation as a musically knowledgeable air personality and also developed engineering and production skills.

Upon graduation, he pursued a radio career. Alas, as the only radio jobs being offered were low paying ones in small markets. Roger did work briefly for a station in Bethlehem, PA but he quickly realized that it would be hard to make ends meet in Bethlehem even though he took a second job just to pay the rent. Roger returned to Philadelphia in the early 70s and for the remainder of the decade he worked in the advertising business by day and played music at night, covering tunes heard on the radio along with a sprinkling of Silverberg-written originals.

A relocation to New York City in 1982 found Roger part of the Greenwich Village scene. He became involved with the Fast Folk Musical Magazine and for several years lent his graphic arts talents to doing their record album jacket and insert design. He also did a lot of “stuffing and mailing” and rubbed elbows with quite a few people whose names any music lover would certainly recognize. Not surprisingly, in such a fertile environment Roger wrote a lot more material. He now had several dozen solid original songs. Some of these he still performs today.

A move in 1987 to Huntington, Long Island, while conducive to starting a family, marked a musical hiatus of sorts. Bleeker and MacDougal was suddenly a long way away and, besides, by the late 80s the scene in The Village had changed. Roger didn’t return to public performance until 1998 when he ventured out to debut two new tunes on piano at an open mic hosted by the Folk Music Society of Huntington. Encouraged by some kind words from Little Toby Walker, who also played that open mic, Roger rededicated himself to doing music.

In 2005, Roger released his first all-originals album, Sketches & Footprints. That record was well regarded by the local music press and was picked up by several public/college radio stations and by internet radio stations, notably RadioCrystalBlue.

Summer 2010 should see the release of Roger’s newest album which will be called Major Seventh Heaven. More blue-eyed soul and keyboard centered than was the case with Sketches, you can stream most of the songs right now by paying a visit to Roger’s MySpace page.
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