"Here's my life..."

I don't want to do this in third-person.  I also don't want to exaggerate my accomplishments to make it sound like my life is particularly eventful or exciting.  Really, it's full of loose ends and open loops, and the question marks outnumber the exclamation points 10:1.  So here's something honest about who I am, where I am, and how I got here.

By the time I was three or four, it had already begun. My mother's organ bench was my favorite spot in the house - I was endlessly intrigued by the sounds I could make pushing those keys. Through my childhood years, I continued 'experimenting' with notes and chords, learning how to put them together to mimic songs I'd heard and make up my own, and, by aural observation, I developed a sort of musical fluency. In the sixth grade, I applied this to the drums and the guitar, figuring out the chord fingerings to my favorite songs before knowing what chords I was playing.

A couple years later, I got very serious about songwriting.  I began experimenting with recording my songs and overdubbing different parts with a double cassette family karaoke machine. (Family karaoke machine? Yes. Wild times indeed.)  This really opened up a whole new world to me in terms of envisioning an idea for a song and actually being able to piece together its entire arrangement.

Then I started stepping out a little bit. I entered a national songwriting competition in high school, and I won. It gave me some momentum and confidence in what I was doing. I began playing some coffeehouse shows, I got deeper into recording and made a cd, I even took a trip to Nashville and played at the infamous Bluebird Cafe (it was featured in the movie "Thing Called Love" with River Phoenix - kind of a hot songwriter spot in Nashville).

Through the years I continued fine-tuning my voice as a songwriter and performer, playing local acoustic shows and electric shows too...

...and that brings us to today.

So what now?

I'm trying to spread the word. I'm launching this website. (Check.) I'm working out some new material and recording my first studio album. I'm reading up on self-promotion. I'm lining up my ducks. I'm learning how to face the unknown, how to succeed well and how to fail well. And I'm writing songs about it.

Please stay tuned.