Michael Card began writing songs at a Kentucky college, where he would write praise choruses for a local church service. Although pushed to earn his Ph.D. by a professor, he was lured into the recording industry by friends Randy Scruggs and John Thompson, who needed a musician to record for their production company's demos. The record label insisted they produce Card's music as their first project, and his acoustic folk sound appeared from the very start; among his records was 1981's Present Reality, 1987's Life, 1993's Come to the Cradle and 1996's Brother to Brother. In 1998, he returned with Starkindler: A Celtic Conversation Across Time. ~ John Bush