How Did You Get Into Music?

I started my musical journey with a 2nd hand guitar in 1987 at the ripe old age of 6 years old. I have loved all things music for as long as i can physically remember. Some of my earliest memories are of my dad playing a candy apple red American Fender Stratocaster to George Thorogood, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Little Feet, Dire Straights, The Stray Cats, Pink Floyd, Iron Maiden, Albert King, Albert Collins, and a plethora of other iconic bands and artists. As a young kid, he used to take me to gigs on 6th street in Austin when i’d visit him on the weekends. As a result, I have to have music playing at all times, or i get stir crazy. My personal hell, would be a world in which there was no music to listen to. Even if it were a constant loop of “oops i did it again”, it would still, to me, be better than no music at all. 

Over the years, I have been in several bands, written hundreds of songs in several genres of music including blues, country, hard rock, experimental, alternative, rock alternative, metal, etc, and over the years i have tweaked, upgraded, or altered in some way, every guitar that i have ever owned in order to fit the style of music i played, or the sound we were going for at that time and also found myself working on my band-mate’s guitars as well.

For several years, i was hot and heavy in the music scene here in Austin. I booked shows for bands, I was a professional photographer, I played in bands, sat in as a session guitarist (or bass, banjo, mandolin, bouzouki, dobro, harmonica, lap steel, pedal steel, or pretty much anything else someone would hand me. I even played Triangle once, to one up my dad, who played a kazoo for a well known country artist. He in turn played a mouth harp for someone else.)