I was born into a musical lifestyle. My father was professional musician, so I had very little difficulty playing with musical instruments and hearing music.

As I grow up I had a passion for the drums. My father played guitar so I wanted to play the drums. I love to hit things to make sound, noise. At the age of ten I was in the school band, playing the snare drum. In the 7 th grade I started to take lessons on the trapset, that my mother paid for. My knowledge of musical rhythm was beginning to take shape. Having the ability to understand tempo and time signature allowed me the confidence to be able to relate with other musicians.

I moved to Flagstaff, Arizona when I was thirteen to go live with my father, be it that my parents separated when I was four. My father knew that I wanted to play the drums but we lived in an apartment. My father gave me a drum machine, a cool four pad thing that I could program.

Adjusting to a new environment, I began to make new friends. My good friend Steve Kelly was taking guitar 101 in 8 th grade. He would come over to my house and play on this old acoustic guitar that my father had put in my room. I never really thought about playing the guitar even though I loved the way it made music. I found myself picking up that old guitar more often. My father said he bought the guitar in Vietnam.

At the age of fourteen I think I asked my father to teach me how to play the guitar. He gave me a Mel Bays chord book. For months I did my best Bob Dylan and my father would teach me songs like Wipeout and House of the Rising Sun. I got a Fender Strat at the age of fifteen and started taking lessons. I began to play ten to twelve hours a day.

In 1990, I moved to Phoenix and started a band called Obnoxious Aggression. The band went into the studio once or twice. I started to understand the recording process. As a musician I knew what I wanted to hear. I began to understand tones of the amps in studio vs. on a stage. Seeing how the engineers mic'd the drum set and separated each instrument to each of the tracks. But like most of us inspiring musicians we never get enough time in the studio to learn how to create the perfect sound.