The period from 1986 when I left “Peggy Werner & the String Fever Band” and moved to California, until 1994 when I joined “Midnight Flyer” in Montana. I’ll expand on each of these stops as they were each pretty different and exciting.
This time period includes a 6 month stop in Sacramento and the beginning of my Andy Dote greeting card line. There was also about a 3 month trip across the country selling those cards.
That was followed by a 3 year stop in Los Angeles where I hardly played music at all (and should have). It’s where I officially began my career as a graphic artist with jobs at 3 publishing companies. I met my future wife (Junko) who is Japanese, born and raised in Tokyo. We got engaged and moved from L.A. to North Idaho for a year before spending an extended time in Tokyo. She was in Tokyo for over a year and I was there for about 7 months, and would go back many more times over the next 20 years or so.
We came back to Idaho, got jobs and bought a house in Sandpoint and began planning for a family. In 1994 we had a son, Christopher, and then a couple of miscarriages in the years that followed. So, Chris turned out to be our only child (blessing).
I began my freelance career as a graphic artist about 6 months before Chris was born so I could be an at-home-dad. Being an at-home-dad was the best thing I ever did and I could easily devote an entire website to just that.
“I believe I know my purpose in life. And one of the hardest things to do when one knows their purpose is to never abandon it for some semblance of ‘respect’ from the ‘world’ or even some of the people that are closest to you.”
~ Mike
Anyway, when my son was just a few months old I began doing some design work for Litehouse Salad Dressing and became friends with a gal who I worked with there. She introduced me to some guys in Thompson Falls, Montana who had a band called “Midnight Flyer” and they were looking for a drummer.
So, after 8 years of travel, marriage and a new baby, I packed up my drums and headed out on the weekends. Not only was it nice to be playing music again, it was particularly nice to be playing back in my home state of Montana.