GRAND JUNCTION — Rebecca Davis Winters said she was a “blues nerd” at 19.

While other teenagers were rocking out to Nirvana, Winters was literally chasing the blues.

After high school Winters began traveling around the country interviewing rock stars and historians, gathering material for a biography on the late Alan Wilson, co-founder of the 1960s blues band Canned Heat.

“He was such a musical genius. I became obsessed with him, like a teenage crush on a rock star,” Winters said.

Winters went to Oxford, Miss. where she researched blues music at the university there. She hung out with a former Canned Heat band member who lived there.

“I’d never been anywhere other than Denver by myself,” Winters said. “I was living it up on Beale Street. It was a bluesy time.”

She traveled to Memphis where she interviewed professor and historian David Evans.

“He was a good friend of Alan’s. He’d help me find people,” she said.

Through music managers, and other contacts like Evans, Winters secured interviews with dozens of people familiar with Wilson and Canned Heat.

Winters began writing her book titled “Blind Owl Blues” in 1997.

That’s when she began drinking coffee and started hanging out in coffee houses, and ultimately became a barista at Coffee Muggers downtown on Main Street.

“Like a lot of writers we have to back our writing with another way to make a living,” Winters said.

Winters approaches her job at Coffee Muggers as seriously as any of her other artistic endeavors.

“Alex (Ruppe who owns the shop along with his wife Jennifer) makes such a beautiful (milk) foam (for lattes). It makes me want to perfect that craft. It really is an art and a craft,” Winters said.

The coffee shop atmosphere itself feeds her creative juices.

“What I like about Coffee Muggers, it’s got real personality,” Winters said. “I get inspired being around interesting people. There are so many creative people who hang out in coffee houses — including my co-workers.”

Along with a rotating art exhibit on the walls, books by local authors are for sale there, including Winter’s “Blind Owl Blues” which was published in 2007.

Winters has sold about 400 copies — a quarter of those from overseas, she said.

Wilson, and Canned Heat “had a huge following in Europe,” Winters said.

Most of the books are sold through her web site: blindowlbio.com.

It all started with an essay

Winters writes other types of documents as well: Resumes, press releases, family newsletters, workplace policies and procedures.

“I get quite a few requests for resumes — especially now when people are looking for work,” Winters said.

She’s also written articles as a freelancer for the Grand Junction Free Press in its early days.

When she was 11, she’d hole up in her room where she worked on a novel.

“My parents were concerned,” Winters said. “I didn’t come out and watch TV like normal kids.”

Perhaps the biggest indicator that she was a writer, was an event that occurred when Winters was 9 or 10.

Winters entered an essay contest sponsored by a department store where the kid who wrote the best essay titled “Why I have the best dad in the world” would win a gold diamond studded watch for the dad.

Winters won.

“That really blew my mind. I remember how thrilled by dad was,” she said.

Winters is working on her second book about Norse mythology and its ancient Runes alphabet.

“It’s kind of a beginners manual of myths and legends,” Winters said. “I’ve always been interested in symbology.”

Music Goddess meets Nightwatchman

Winters’ parents bought a farm on east Orchard Mesa in the late 1980s — a place called “the Fruit Basket” where Winters helps out by thinning peaches, making candy, or “whatever my mom needs,” she said.

Her husband Jeff — whom she married in 2005 — works for her parents at the farm.

Jeff and Rebecca Winters met at KAFM Community Radio Station where both programmed their own music shows as volunteers. He was the “Nightwatchman.” She was the “Music Goddess.”

“The first show I ever did was world music — Indian, African, and reggae,” Winters said.

Her regular show after that however, was of course, blues.

From 2000 to 2008, Winters performed various tasks at the station both as an employee and a volunteer.

She managed the station’s Radio Room venue for a year-and-a-half where she worked with KAFM board member and musician John Anglim.

The two have collaborated on a number of projects since. Anglim designed the cover of her book, and Winters wrote the review for Anglim and Paul Harshman’s Flat Top Reed blues CD “Junction.”

“Rebecca is one of my favorite folks around town,” Anglim said. “She’s funny and smart. She feels like an old soul to me. She knows those old blues artists better than me.”

Winters also moderated a noon-hour public affairs program on animal welfare, and she’s helped facilitate the station’s Friday noon-hour call-in “Kitchen Sink” shows.

Winters still compiles the radio station’s entertainment calendar each week which is posted on the station’s Web site and aired over the radio.

Winters met not only her husband in the KAFM community, but other life-long friends as well, she said.

If you have a resume that needs polishing Winters can be reached at 270-1733.

Or you can find her some days at Coffee Muggers where she’s learned to make a good cup of latte.

Reach Sharon Sullivan at ssullivan@gjfreepress.com.