Guitar virtuoso Tim Sparks was born October 31, 1954, in Winston-Salem, NC, taking his first music lessons from his moonshiner uncle; while attending the North Carolina School of the Arts, he also studied classical guitar with Andr?s Segovia prot?g? Jesus Silva. Upon graduating in 1973, Sparks went on tour with an R&B band, and during a stop in Minneapolis he opted to move to the city permanently