Truth be told, I almost never read the bio portion on websites, so good on you if you clicked the link to the page on purpose!
I could go through a long drawn out history of my life in music and it wouldn’t be all that interesting. So here are some highlights.
I started on the piano and didn’t like it, but I’m glad I did. When I was five, I asked my parents for a trumpet. They told me it would take three years for “them to grow the brass” to make it. I studied the trumpet professionally under some of CT most prominent music educators and became the second chair lead player in the Greater Hartford Youth Wind Ensemble by the time I was fifteen. Around that same time, I won a scholarship competition and played a solo for 2000 people at a local university. When the audience applauded and my father saw my face, he leaned over to my mother and said, “he’s gonna get addicted to this.” And he wasn’t wrong.
I was playing the drums at home on my older brother’s kit. I started first to emulate him, then it became my therapy. One day my father asked me, “why don’t you play along to records?”. And that changed my life because that is the bulk of my education on the drums. I started a band, we practiced for hours, played local gigs, and ended up splitting up and moving to different states.
When I finished school, I went on the road with an Irish rock band and they gave me a full immersion course on touring life and performance. I lived in Brooklyn, NY and began private studies with some incredible drummers and educators, most notably John Riley, Steve Wolf, Shawn Pelton, and Matt Wilson. I’ll always be grateful for the lessons I learned from them.
I now reside in beautiful Nashville, TN to focus more on recording and building my own home studio. If you’re considering the move, I’ll say it’s a nice change of pace going from a shoe box apartment with no drums to having house concerts and living three minutes from the lake. If you’ve read this far, I really appreciate your interest in my career. Here’s to many more years and even more music ahead!