Pepper Watkins was born and raised in rural Clarke County in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. He grew up exposed to the region's music, and naturally became interested in related styles and forms as he began playing the guitar while in high school.

In college, Pepper designed and taught an instructional short course on fingerpicked guitar. The demands of a teaching approach, work in other musical enterprises (including the short lived Rusty Water String Band, which was doomed by the impending graudation of all of its members), and studying briefly with A Prarie Home Companion's Pat Donohue, reinvigorated his interest in composing and arranging. That interest led (at least in part) to the composition of several of the pieces contained in this very site.

Pepper lives on the upper west side of New York, where he studies historic preservation-- the only discipline capable of challenging his devotion to music (but they're really the same thing in the end anyway). Pepper is available for live performance, instruction, and mayhem.