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Guitar virtuoso Tim Sparks was born October 31, 1954, in Winston-Salem, NC, taking his first music lessons from his moonshiner uncle; while attending the North Carolina School of the Arts, he also studied classical guitar with Andrés Segovia protégé Jesus Silva. Upon graduating in 1973, Sparks went on tour with an R&B band, and during a stop in Minneapolis he opted to move to the city permanently; there he joined the vintage jazz combo Rio Nido, which recorded albums including I Like to Riff, Hi Fly, and Voicings before disbanding in 1987. Sparks then spent the next several years exploring musical cultures from across the globe, winning a Jerome Foundation fellowship to study the fado tradition in Portugal as well as earning a grant from Minnesota's State Arts Board to study Eastern European music; he additionally played in a variety of local ethnic acts including including the Brazilian group Mandala, the Persian outfit Robayat, and even a Jewish wedding band. A year after the release...