I've been playing music since I was very young, perhaps 9 years old. My first attempt was taking piano lessons as a little boy, but I grew restless and gave it up. A few years later I picked up taking acoustic guitar lessons, but again it didn't seem to serve a purpose at that time. It wasn't until I entered high school and grew very found of New Wave music starting around 1979 with bands like Gary Numan, Devo, the B-52's and Berlin. Even at age 12 I found the music fresh, smart, and different from my boring small town. I got my first bass/amp combo in 1983 for Christmas from my grandparents. I had no clue how to play the bass but my cousin and I wanted to form a band and he decided he wanted to play keyboards - plus he had more money than I did and keyboards are much more expensive. My initial passion was playing keys, but alas I was playing bass.

I started taking bass lessons in 1984 from another older cousin of mine who was/is quite astute in jazz music. He taught me how to play the bass with my fingers to music by Herbie Hancock, Stanley Clark, and Miles Davis. He would laugh at me when I would bring in rock music I wanted to figure out, like New Year's Day by U2, or something by Roxy Music.

By the Summer of 1984, my cousin on keys and I started our first band, Origin Unknown. We found the name pretty fitting for the kind of bands we were covering in our town. We had all cover songs minus a couple of simple, punk-like tracks with meaningless lyrics. Eventually after playing a couple of shows in my hometown we were off to college. In college we decided to change our name again to Oxford Scholar. The name came from a cockney book of slang meaning "Give me a dollar". Again we were mostly a cover band playing in cover band venues. We did quite well, but I was burning out on covering other people's music and I had privately written some tracks myself that seemed more honest.

By early 1987 big changes came about. Our band decided to let my cousin go. It was kind of traumatic at the time. Not only was it affecting my personal life, but my family became involved too. Some found it a bad thing to do, but my cousin was slowly choking us all out on the direction he wanted us to go. So once he was let go we dropped all covers and picked up a new guy. It took a while as we tried out other people that didn't last long. Eventually as a five piece we became Dreams of Reason. Dreams of Reason, initially, sounded like REM meets Japan meets Jesus and Mary Chain. Everything was working well until our new guitarist had a house fire and lost everything. After that he moved away and we went in search for a replacement. The replacement came into the form of two people and the result was about three years of solid playing, live shows, one compliation track, and two albums worth before we disbanded.

After Dreams of Reason ended in 1991, I played briefly in a band with my singer of Dreams of Reason called Rugg. I also worked with our keyboardist on an album and live performance called Badreams and later renamed Ozone Breakfast. By this time I wasn't into traditional rock music, but more experimental and ambient stuff. I had finally purchased an expensive Ensonqie EPS 16+ keyboard, and worked on my first real solo recordings. The project was title Corporate Lovenest and was recorded on a 2-track machine that helped me vent a previous relationship gone wrong.

By the very end of 1992 I met a very talented guitarist who impressed me quite a bit with his song writing skills and singing. We formed a band called Did at the beginning of 1993. We added two more people and wrote a ton of tracks in a brief period of time. We played out a lot and found that we really worked well together. It was short lived and Did ended by July of 1993.

During the years of 1993 to 1996, I kind of stopped playing music. I was burnt out on the live scene and really didn't want to start a band and start practicing again. This was probably the longest I've gone without doing anything, but I enjoyed it. In 1996, my ex-Did bandmate and I decided to release a full album that were tracks from 1993 live shows and song writing. Once we finished up that album we decided to be a studio writing duo by the name of Somnambulist. Somnambulist put out two albums and a video and existed from 1996-1999 after half of Somnambulist moved to NYC.

Also during that time while living in Bloomington I started my solo project Grasspig in the late Fall of 1997. I purchased a used four track from a friend and by January of 1998, released my first album. 1998 was a big writing year for me, as I completed four albums in one year including moving to Chicago. Grasspig also put out an album in 1999, 2000, and 2001. Grasspig continues to date and released it's last album in early 2005.

Around the time that Somnambulist was breaking up, a couple of friends of mine asked me to join their live shows in Emperor Penguin. One of the best times I've ever had working with some amazing people. I played electric guitar, bass, and keys wherever they needed me. I also helped to write one track featured on the 'Damn EP'. We mainly played at Empty Bottle in Chicago, but that was fine with all of us. That went on until Spring of 2001.

Once Emperor Penguin split up, my girlfriend and I decided to move to Bloomington again. So while living there, another friend of mine and I formed Liquid Crystal Display basically to put out a single track for a 'Live from Bloomington 2001' compilation. The track didn't make it (probably because we never played live), but it became a four song EP (adding a drummer, Ned), followed by another EP in the Summer of 2002. By that Summer I moved to Providence, RI and recorded an almost completely long distance album, 'From Here to Providence', during most of 2003. In mid-2005 I moved back to Chicago and started working on a 2nd album that took 1.5 years to complete.

So that's my music story in a long nutshell. I'll keep adding and editing this as I move through time.