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| I have been playing with bands in the Lansing area since
the mid-seventies, starting my musical journey through life in
school playing trombone. I soon discovered guitar (and chicks),
and life just wasn't the same. Fortunately (stupidly), my parents recognized and encouraged this silliness, and another
fledgling rock god (thanks Drew) was born. My first band, Saphire, emerged from a crazed hormonal desire to show off to girls (didn't everyone's?), and lasted through high school. A short stint as sound man in the Detroit area led to another short stint as a sound man in Lansing with the band Exposure. At one point, the band lineup was shuffling around, and I was asked to join as a guitar player. The rest of the band found out and promptly moved out of town. Yet another short stint as a sound man turned into perhaps the first real playing gig as a bass player with the band Silhouette (Silly Wet). After the band's final Roadkill and Confusion Tour '84, I joined Marci and the Wayouts, later renamed Top Secret (oh yeah, that band that starts all their songs with a drum solo). I left that group of extremely talented players (how did I fit in there, you're wondering? Good question...) to join Jennifer Lewis and the Professionals. After running away screaming from that situation came jobs with Nickelodeon, later Disc Drive, with its rapid-fire succession of three girl singers, and then Colorfast, leading into the late Eighties playing one night a week with Showdown. Throughout the Nineties, my mercenary ways led me to playing out about once a month, with whoever would have me (and pay me, of course). There were also a couple of semi-regular bands thrown in for good measure: Bones, with whom I probably had the most fun of all, and The Lost Hippies Psychedelic Sideshow Band, whose list of gigs was probably shorter than the band name itself! During the Summer of 2000, you could have found me reaching for the pinnacle of stardom (almost, anyway) playing guitar every weekend with Zen Ponies at Chips Sports Bar in Lansing. After three months, the band couldn't take it any more, and I became a free agent once again. Got all that? Did you even make it this far? So here it is, a new millennium, and I sit at home with my mad conglomeration of recording gear and amuse myself writing little jazz-rock instrumental songs for my own listening pleasure, so I can discover a whole new way to not make money in the music business. Such is life.
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