John Walsh

John Walsh hosts Pacific Standard Time, the KCBX show that features music from the Great American Songbook. John is a guy with a lot of interests -- from computers and teaching to gardening and cooking. And since 2015, the Great American Songbook has been somewhere near the top of his list of interests. He makes regular singing appearances with Cabaret805, a loose-knit group of singers from around SLO County who seek to create a popular Cabaret scene locally.

John has a lifetime of performance credits on the stage, as well -- even internationally, when he sang with the Tokyo International Singers for several years. His theater work began at Cuesta College around the time the new campus was built. And he was involved in the SLO Little Theater, too. Maybe someone remembers their production of “The Owl and the Pussycat” in 1976? It was a long time ago, but John still remembers some of his Owl lines (just like he still remembers some of his Latin prayers).

John came to the Central Coast circa 1970 to live in Morro Bay and Cayucos. He managed a nursery back then, and more recently worked in the wholesale nursery industry in Oxnard, inside the office, monkeying around with the computers. He’s now involved part time with garden creation and maintenance in Los Osos and SLO.

He has always been a plant guy, even though he ended up living life as an English teacher after finishing school in San Francisco in 1980. While teaching English in Japan in the 1980s, he got involved with tech, eventually becoming a Web technician and designer. A late comer to computer science, he attacked coding from an oblique angle when the World Wide Web was brand new. He’ll tell you that he’s not a math guy, but he is a logic guy. He likes to say that in the beginning the Web was all about the artistry, displaying your business or person in the most imaginative way possible, in millions of colors.

John also loves to cook (one of the original international “foodies”). Ask him how to pronouce Sriracha authentically. He likes to live in a place where people are active (like SLO County!). It makes it that much easier to stay fit. John has lived in most of the cities on the West Coast, and has spent more than a decade working and traveling on the other side of the Pacific Rim. Most of his years between age 30 and 60 he lived elsewhere than California. In fact, Tokyo is the place he lived the longest in one abode. Like so many of us, though, he has always considered SLO County his real and true home.