About Terry

I grew up in Oak Park, IL just outside of Chicago.  I began teaching myself guitar in 1973 when I was in seventh grade.  My older brother bought a Bob Dylan song book and I learned damn near every tune in it.  By the time I graduated from St. Ignatius High School, my band The Restless Youth, was playing talent shows, school dances and unsupervised house parties. 

I moved to Carbondale, IL to attend SIU and after graduation formed a band with Phil Bayer, Kevin James and Chris Obren.  We called ourselves the Modern Day Saints and spent the next five or six years driving around the country in a converted school bus playing corner dives, road houses, nightclubs, frat houses and the occasional theatre.  It was our only source of income.  The four of us had very different rock ‘n’ roll tastes but we merged at Neil Young, the Who and the Stones. 

We recorded a slew of original music and in 1989 moved to Los Angeles to sell it all to the highest bidder.  We lost Obren to fatherhood and gained Rob Pierce on drums.  We enjoyed a rabid LA following as regulars on the Sunset Strip but the bidders weren’t high enough.  After a long residency at the Whisky-a-Go-Go we broke up in 1992. 

In 1994 I moved back to Chicago and reconnected with James and Pierce to form the roots rock group, the YellowHammers.  In 1996 we released our debut LP, Suffer Fools Gladly, followed in 2000 with All the People Some of the Time and in 2005 with Satellite, all on our own label.  We’re currently working on our fourth LP.

In 2007 I released my first solo offering, Our Separate Ways.  I had been writing songs for MDS and YH and in most cases those songs were sung by my very capable partners Phil Bayer and Rob Pierce respectively.  On OSW I gave my songs my own voice.