short bio

Cici Porter is a critically acclaimed musician with over 30 years of professional experience as a performer, singer-songwriter and recording artist. She has received local and national music awards, and has been featured in films and television.
She is also a mom, a painter, an elementary school music teacher, and an advocate for children's safety and adult responsibility, creating a world of peace and well-being.

long bio

It always seemed to take forever to fall asleep when I was a kid, so I kept a tiny transistor radio under my pillow, and listened to it deep into the night. Consequently, I knew all the words to every song on WCOL and sang them wherever I went. To this compulsive behavior add a guitar in fourth grade: a Harmony with 'f' holes that both my brothers gave up on and left in the basement. I found it and spent the next four years locked in my room practicing until I needed BandAids on my fingers.

Also in elementary school I had this amazing art teacher named Lila Cress who busted me wide open to art with her utterly elegant presence. In second grade we discussed the finer elements of design as she showed us slides of cave paintings, Michelangelo, Kandinsky and Klee. Then of course, we got the temperas out and went for it. Hallelujah.

My first concert was playing guitar and singing Suzanne for my brother and his beautiful girlfriend back down there in the basement. It was a success.

In high school, I fell in with an amazingly talented group of musicians; dozens of us hanging around the church basement coffeehouse, swapping songs, harmonies and hormones. Heaven. We formed every kind of band in every combination. I am SO GRATEFUL for the community of musicians I came up in. May they all play happily to this day...

My first paying gig was solo at a vegetarian restaurant for $25 and great banana bread. I was fourteen years old. It is with pride and joy that I say I have played professionally ever since. That same year I got my first serious guitar (a Guild D-44) and my uncle bought me my first Joni Mitchell album (Song for a Seagull).

I was an art major in college and played in a bluegrass band called Four on the Floor. After traveling some, I landed in Alaska with time and space to write songs. Actually, I just sat by a stream and snatched words and melodies right out of the atmosphere. No really, I sat by the creek and simply received song after song...

Somehow from All That Solitude I got myself down to the Soul of Shrivilization: Southern California. There was a midwest rock tour with the Willie Phoenix Band (Hi guys. You still out there?) and then a couple of decades down here on the border with Bordertown. I came to San Diego and lucked out again, just like in highschool. Found a bunch of fantastically musical and creative friends and put some bands together. We've had more fun than is legal in most states, and we're not dead yet.

Meanwhile, of course, there has been birth, death, marriage, divorce, re-marriage, more birth, etc, etc, cats, dogs and goldfish.

I got into child abuse prevention a few years ago and developed the Journey to Wholeness Project. More about that at j2wp. I spent a few years flying around the country preaching to the choir, then got an opportunity to make a difference for kids more directly: I started teaching music at an elementary school. It is possibly the coolest thing you could do with your life--here's to Lila Cress--but the public school reality of it has me wondering sometimes if I'm too old for this...

Which of course is The Big Question for me these days: What do I do with all this experience? Sometimes I think it is high time to disappear into the woods again and become a hermit painter. At the same time, I might get back out on the music circuit, quit dying my hair, and become the Amazing Aging Woman. Wouldn't that be a hoot? A woman who admits to her age and continues strutting and fretting long past her allotted fifteen minutes. What do you think? Do I have the stamina? Do I have the strength? Could it possibly be harder than dealing with 40 first graders first thing every weekday morning?

I've skipped over alot: my Taylor guitars (a GCM for performing and a Baby for teaching), all that dance, African drumming, Wooden Angel, Orff music, my art studio on Palomar Mountain that burned down in the Witch Fires this fall. My illustrious husband Larry Groupe and our four beautiful children. But I think this is quite enough of me and my incessant story right now. If you're still reading this, I'm amazed. Talk to me. Respond. Make this a dialogue. Tell me anything. Show me your website. You've heard my story. Now what's yours?