Russell McCullers Hoke Jr. was born on February 18, 1965, in Tampa, Florida.

A prolific songwriter in his youth, he played the five-string banjo, the acoustic guitar, and the harmonica. With his bagpipes he was a busker, performing on the streets of San Antonio, Texas for nearly twenty-six years. Though he dearly loved the intricate structure of bagpipe music for its profound emotional depth, he also considered it crucial toward the training of his mind—for the strange, disordered, and hazardous journey on the left-hand path.

He touched the marbles of the Acropolis in Athens, stood in the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid of Giza, ascended the tiers of Borobudur in Yogyakarta, studied the Great Highland Bagpipe in Glasgow, and wandered throughout much of the United States. His most significant journey, however, was to the realms of the psyche, which he sedulously explored on the carriage of verse.