I grew up in Sacramento, California. The tree-lined suburb was a fine place to grow up with a loving family. I started playing drums at 12, taking lessons from my father's coworker, Matt Ryan. After a practice pad, my first kit was a '67 gold sparkle Ludwig 5-piece. Ryan a great friend and teacher, and built in me an incredible foundation for all kinds of styles and concepts until his passing in 1998.
The next year I started at a new public performing arts school, Natomas Charter School. My 7th Grade year was the school's first year open, and it was riotous. The free-form, lassaiz-faire attitude pervaded not only the artistic classes but the academic classes as well. If you've seen Fame you have an idea, but imagine more white people.
In 2000, a friend asked me to fill in on drums for a production of Nunsense for a local theater company, Runaway Stage Productions. I performed several musicals with the company, learning the ropes of the theater business and honing my reading skill while in school, under the musical tutelage of teachers like Matthew Spiva and Brian Rivers, I was learning the basics of recording, live playing and professionalism in music.
I graduated Natomas Charter in 2003 with a good academic foundation for college and a sample of nearly every artistic medium under my belt. I attended one year of Sacramento City College before moving to San Francisco with my older brother. Making ends meet serving bagels, slinging pizzas, and eventually pouring drinks, I attended City College of San Francisco. I explored the facets of academia and landed on Neuroscience as an academic focus. When the time came to seriously zero in on my future I did the honest, hardworking, American thing and took a road trip across the country for a few months.
Staying with friends and family across the country, I played the guitar I brought with me to pass the time between seeing the sights and chronicling my experiences. I stayed in New York for a time, with friends at NYU and my brother who was in town, put up on business. It would have taken a heart of stone not to fall in love with this insane place at that point in my life.
I moved back to San Francisco in 2006 with the Big Appleseed planted. I continued bar backing and 'tending and, through a friend, joined the Bushmill's San Francisco Irish Pipers. Apart from vastly improving my palate for the brown liquid, I worked my fingers up to competition speed for corps drumming. Studying under Chuck Wall and Tom Robinson I had never been challenged as intensely, and I had never made such noticeable progress so fast. I learned how to properly practice drums, hugely improving my confidence and focus.
In 2009, with the economy tanking and the excitement of The City West waning, the added help of my girlfriend, Candice Chetta and our dear friend Jeremy Ensey finally allowed for a move east to New York City. We arrived April 20th 2009 to our apartment share in Park Slope Brooklyn in the pouring rain, lugging our lives in suitcases up the stairs to our new life.
We've since relocated to the fertile area of Crown Heights as the early- to medium-early wave of gentrification to a vibrant, historic part of Brooklyn. My apparently insatiable thirst for musical learning has been re-awoken and when I'm not waiting tables or tending bar to squeeze by comfortably I am most likely neglecting housework to practice drumming.
My goals included being able to survive on pay from a job where I am required to play music. This will take a lot of practice. I am OK with working for it.
This is me making It happen before It's too late.
