About John

“It seemed that Pete Seeger and friends were always somewhere just around the corner, playing for free for some cause or another.” It was during those years that John taught himself to play the guitar with the help of a few lessons, and would venture off to concerts and music events, often hitchhiking by himself to see Muddy Waters, Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys, and countless others that left him with strong spiritual and visual impressions of these masters.

Following in his fathers footsteps at the age of 17 he set out to see our great country by thumb after which at the age of 18 he settled into a rather normal experience of working and pursuing many different interests in his spare time including music.   In 1996, John met and befriended blues harmonica legend Little Sammy Davis. The meeting presented John with many photo opportunities, which inspired him to pursue his interest in Artistic Photography. “At some point, I just looked around and could’nt stand to go another day without at least trying to document what I saw going on before me.”
Inspired by Dorothea Lange & Dick Waterman, John, while earning a living driving a truck, set out to learn photography and try to portray what he was seeing so that it could be seen by others thtough his eyes, preserving moments in time artistically and historically.
What began in 2001, with a 2.0 mega pixel Sony camera, has turned into a self – imposed mission to document great musicians near and far with his camera. His current portfolio consists of tens of thousands of photographs of musicians and performing artists as well as other more common subjects. John shares his life, home & studio space with his wife photographer Danielle Herzog Rocklin.
John who is also co-founder of The Honesdale Roots & Rhythm Festival, sings and plays guitar in an Americana band called The Crackers as well as plays guitar and sings in a soulful & funky rock n roll band called The Barn Cats.