John Spencer Yantiss is a writer, songwriter, singer, musician, and artist. He has written poetry, fiction, lyrics, witticisms, and history and sociological essays since childhood, his great-grandmother and mother fostering this expression. Also encouraged by his mother was an early and abiding interest in music. When he was three years of age he climbed up on the stool of an old upright Steinway, and began to play around at playing, actually taking lessons beginning at the age of five. Guitar was added at age eleven. Taking to the nightclub circuit while still under-age, he takes satisfaction from a statement made to him by Dickey Betts, soon after formation of the Allman Brothers Band, during a return visit to Jacksonville, FL, where all of the ABB members met. Dickey handed him a newly acquired acoustic guitar, saying, “Here, you play it; you always played a better box guitar than me.”