Born August 27, 1953 – Marvin Forrest Gershowitz
Aka Name: SpeedLimit *created originally for a non-existant punk band in 1977
I’ve been writing and creating poem, prose and song poems since I was 6 or 7. Artist who have read and like some of my poetry are folks like Allen Ginsberg and Ken Kesey. After several attempts to learn piano and other instruments I finally settled into a Gibson Guitar in 1974 at the age of 21.
I spent the first 20 years thinking of myself more as a songwriter, but not a song performer though I was performing all along the way. In 1993 I finally learned to enjoy myself on stage and increase my performance schedule from about 1 to 4 time a month to around 20 times per month… almost exclusively in Austin, Texas.
After my arrest for protesting against the war, divorce, and other personal loss I decided to finally take my passion and treat it as a business. As Peter Townsend said, ‘Being a full time musician is a dangerous business.’ I believe this is true and where most musicians normal quit playing by their 28th birthdays, I have only begun to get serious about my chosen career after 50 years of age. My assumption is that I will unlikely live past 57 to 60, but I would have lived it all better than I did the first 50 years.
