The often imitated but never duplicated sound of leader and founder, Spencer Perskin, is undoubtedly the backbone of Shiva’s Headband.  Perskin began his career at age 8, and by age 9 was accepted as a special music student at Southern Methodist University in Dallas where he studied for eight year.  During his high school years, he played with the Hillcrest High Orchestra, the Hillcrest Band and the Dal-Hi Orchestra.  Following high school, Perskin attended North Texas State University where he, along with fellow classmates Michael Murphy and Steve Fromholz, was a member of the school’s Folk Music Club.  Perskin also played with the N.T.S.U. Orchestra. 

Three years later, in Austin, he and his wife, Susan, and friends founded the soon-to-be- famous Shiva’s Headband.  In 1969 Perskin released the Shiva’s second single on his new Armadillo Record label, after the Capitol release in 1970 he founded, with a lot of help from his friends, the now-legendary Armadillo World Headquarters—the institution most responsible for placing Austin, Texas firmly on the World Music Map!  Leading the group for almost three decades today Perskin fronts a rejuvenated Shiva’s that is as much a part of the new millennium as it was the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s.