Secret Revelation #1: The Professor mooned international sumo wrestling champion Hirohito Yanagisawa during a match point break on Japanese television, distracting Hirohito, and ultimately costing him the title.  That's the kind of raw energy and uncompromising manliness that this Flood Road banjoman exudes. What more can one say about this artistic giant? A man who spent his wayward youth hopscotching the northern territory via hobo-laden boxcars; shepherded hairless mountain goats in the Himalayas with a clan of nomadic Eunuchs; moonlighted as a meat inspector in Amsterdam's Red Light District; roughnecked it on a derelict oil rig in the Sea of Okhotsk; and finally came full circle to lead a migrant workers strike in downtown Schenectady. Nothing at all...Sadly, The Professor did none of these things ...however, he has mastered a good many of the them from watching documentary films and The Three Stooges! 
The Professor grew up in the the thriving metropolis of Rotterdam, NY and started playing 5-string banjo in junior high school.
His first band, The Damn Rotters, won their one and only high school talent show by sabotaging the PA system immediately following their thrash version of Slim Whitman's "Indian Love Call". Town folk can still be overheard festering about that scandalous evening.  1976 was an "instrumental" year for The Professor. Along with Tom Yanis and Bill Kilcullen, the trio formed "Schoharie Turnpike": an acoustic bluegrass band that gigged locally until mid-1977. Schultz departed the band in the summer of '77. Secret Revelation #2: Yanis and Kilcullen, of Rotterdam, NY, went on to form the "Sweet Cider" band, which has been together since '77. After a 2-year hiatus in sunny Florida, Schultz returned to the Capital District, and banjo in hand, created hauntingly wicked tunes with the Rotterdam Junction based "Waterwitch".
In 1994, The Professor joined with a select handful of local music heavyweights to found Mooncat,
a bluegrass folkrock hybrid with jugs full of energy and all their front teeth! The band has toured for decades and appeared everywhere from Albany to
Schenectady to Troy, and most incorporated municipalities in between...verily, a well traveled band. Through sheer luck, fate, or hard work, the band is still playing together today. Be sure to catch a Mooncat show! Not one to rest on his laurels, The Professor decided to stretch his banjo strings a bit more in 2008, and found his way into the Flood Road band via Craigslist. Upon his first meeting with J. Peter, The Professor vowed to repeat all the same mistakes he's ever made, deliberate or otherwise, if accepted into FRB. An offer like that couldn't be refused, and The Professor was in.
The banjoman's favorite Flood Road song is “Dirty Lunch Pail”,
which, coincidentally, isn't a Flood Road song at all, but has been commandeered by the band. When The Professor wrote the stirring number, which tells of the trials and tribulations of America's coal miners and their families, he truly hit pay dirt.  Secret Revelation #2: The Professor doesn't actually have the "sheep skin" by which his title is attributed. However, he is a pretty smart guy, and we like to humor him. INFLUENCES: Flatt & Scruggs, Stanley Brothers, J. Peter, Twisted Sister, Grandpa Munster, Ronald McDonald, Ronald Reagan, Cashews & Assorted Nuts
DISCOGRAPHY: Mooncat - "Take Away" (2006)  |
