My musical interest begins with one memorable event: my mother told me to go and fetch my sister from the inside of a garage that was one of her teenage friends hangout spot. I entered to a cloud of pot smoke, walls covered in posters and Led Zeppelin's 'Black Dog' blasting on the stereo. I was hooked. For years, concert ticket-stubs, T-shirts, Rolling Stone magazine, and my mothers record collection would be symbols of what 'cool', 'older' people were in to. Classic Rock radio and those records is where I got all of my musical upbringing.

The second step in a musical direction was my former Step-Father. Jack Deese. He was a singer-songwriter with tons of guitars and stereo equipment and wonderful songs. I didn't realize what a songwriter was yet. I didn't realize that all those records were made by people that started out just like Jack. What I did realize was that there was music that I liked and music that I didn't like. Jack made music that I liked. It sounded like Dylan and Petty and Crosby, Stills and Nash. Like 'Classic Rock', it pulled from the Blues and Country and Jazz and even Classical. I never tried to play the guitar until Jack moved out of the house. He gave me my first guitar when he left.

I decided to join the Marines. I ended up going to Okinawa, Japan. It was here that I started writing music and lyrics. After leaving Japan I was sent to California.

With some other Marines I formed my first band, 'Unusable Signal', of course we were horrible and thought we were the best shit ever!

Eventually the slide towards becoming a 'serious' musician led me to move to Los Angeles.

I began to gig in LA and try to slide my way into the 'scene'. After a while I realized that the 'scene' was not talent based. And the old saying 'it's not what you know, but who you know', started to really make sense.