Dusk Weaver

Dusk seemed destined from birth for extraordinary adventure, and he brings that atypical life to bear on his prose and musical art. At age 3, he won a major baby pageant that included all-expenses-paid screen testing in Hollywood. 

However, Fate stepped in, and tragedy placed Dusk, instead, in a South Carolina orphanage where he was raised with 350 other children to age 18. 

Over time, the strangers at the orphanage became Dusk's close-knit family, and at the institution's school, Dusk excelled in sports, academics, and music, eventually earning a varsity letter jacket along with many high school superlatives, including Valedictorian. And, from age 12 onward, Dusk found deep fulfillment in the rhythm & blues bands that he formed. 

After high school graduation, Dusk attended Furman University where he joined the national music fraternity ΦMA and a jazz/rock fusion band, both of which fanned his creative fires brighter still. 

As a young adult, Dusk made a two-year exploratory trip across America and wrote a detailed account of it in a weekly feature series for the nation's fastest growing daily newspaper. At journey's end, he settled in Southern California for five years, and for most of that time, he raised Percheron draft horses and lived next door to actor John Travolta. 

In California, Dusk also wrote the award-winning book "Sunburst: A People, A Path, A Purpose" under contract with publisher Harcourt Brace, and a photo of him disking vegetable fields with a team of Percheron horses was used on dozens of nationally distributed natural food products. 

Through Dusk's ongoing devotion to music, especially troubadour-style songwriting, he befriended legends Townes Van Zandt, Billy Joe Shaver, and Mickey Newbury, who generously served as role models and mentors. 

When Dusk married and began his own family, he opted to homeschool his children while he simultaneously earned a degree by independent study through Western Illinois University. He and his family lived for three years of this period in a 22' Sioux tipi (where Dusk's son was born). 

Subsequently, Dusk designed and built a unique, passive solar home in the shape of a Gothic cathedral. The structure is supported by massive curved wooden beams and is paneled throughout with natural V-groove pine. (Hover over - then click - photos at right for captions and full-page views.) 

These and many other noteworthy experiences are the very fabric which Dusk tailors in his prose and songs. By way of his vivid word and musical portraits, most of us can vicariously share in the delight of people, places, and things we might otherwise never know, while the fortunate few who are blessed to have firsthand memories of such are treated to glowing reminders of those momentous times. (See the various slideshows on the “Living” page.)