Don Gnecco - A Personal Glimpse

Miss Nancy and I reside at Mountainview Cottage in the small village of Demorest, Georgia, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Our three adult offspring are off leading their own lives. We are blessed to visit them occasionally on the southern Maine coast, in the Columbia River Gorge on the Washington-Oregon border, and in Baltimore. Our two pups, Rosie and Pippi, keep us company and provide sufficient activity in the house. In addition to songwriting, I am fortunate to have many interests and activities. I enjoy being outdoors, especially gardening and landscaping in the backyard. I am also very much at home in my basement workshop, working with wood or at Hemlock Studio Gallery where I serve as gallery manager and create stained-glass pieces. One of my favorite causes is Volunteers for Literacy of Habersham County.
Over the years, I have enjoyed choral singing--in church choirs, the Mountain Voices Community Chorus, the Piedmont University Chorale, Southern Maine Chorale, the Seaglass Chorale, Notre Dame College Concert Choir, and Tri-City Community Chorus. It has been a pleasure to serve on the music team at Unity of Gainesville and at Unity of Greater Portland in Maine. I have also enjoyed participating in community theatre productions. My favorite role was Max Detweiller in two Seaglass productions of The Sound of Music. I am often asked how songs are born, whether I write the lyrics or the music first, etc. My general response is that I'm not really writing them. I'm merely writing them down. Several years ago, a colleague argued songs are really poems set to music (an assumption with which I do not entirely agree!) and suggested that I write an article for a university creative magazine. The article, published in The Last Word at University of New England, is entitled, "Songwriting: A Double Process - And Twice the Satisfaction." A memoir, The Dean's Underwear, was published by Outskirts Press in 2020. My most recent "day job" was at Piedmont University in northeastern Georgia, where I was privileged to serve as the Dean of the School of Education. Click here to read how I landed my dream job. Currently, I am enjoying working with teachers at Gwinnett Online Campus in Lawrenceville, Georgia, where I am serving as Professor-in-Residence.