I started playing on my toy drum kit that I got for Christmas when I was 5 in 1974. I was totally blown away when I saw KC & The Sunshine Band on television a couple of years later and my parents got me a better toy kit made of clear blue acrylic (similar to Ludwig Vistalites) and I started trying to play along with KC, the Bee Gees, and other bands that were on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. I also started listening to rock bands that were popular in the late 70's such as Foreigner, ELO, Boston, Kiss, and also R&B artists such as Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder.

I joined the school band in 5th grade (Bristol, TN) and got my first real drum, a Premier snare drum at age 10 and began learning rudiments and how to read music. I was into all the popular rock and pop music of the early 80's but was introduced to Rush in '82 (7th grade) by a friend that lived down the street and knew I was an aspiring drummer. Tom Sawyer blew me away and from that point, Rush and trying to learn by listening to Neil was my main focus. I also listened to all the other popular music at the time (Journey, Loverboy, Ratt, Def Leppard, Judas Priest, Toto, Van Halen, Quiet Riot, etc.) and got my first "real" drums for my 13th birthday. (black Slingerlands) Although I was in junior high, I had been taking lessons from the teacher at the high school and I was asked to play in the high school jazz band.

At 15, I joined my first real band. It was an established local cover band that played at the local clubs and school dances and proms and we played typical top-40 and rock that was popular in the mid-80's. From there, I bounced around to other working bands, often playing with two or three at a time. I was in the school band and orchestra all through high school and then went to East Tennessee State University on a full music scholarship. I was heavily involved in the marching band and drum corps communities during this time and also played snare drum with the Spirit of Atlanta drum and bugle corps.

At 20, I got my first gig with a band that traveled extensively. It was with Benny Wilson, an artist who had been the primary back-up singer for a few national country artists and had also sang in a band with members of Kansas. It was my first time playing with top-notch players and it's when I learned what being a drummer was all about. It was also a blast playing for large crowds on a regular basis. During my early-mid 20's, I started branching out and becoming more versatile, playing with R&B/dance bands, country bands, and more rock bands. In '95, I was playing for two country artists on the verge of getting major record deals (Ben and I were both playing for Clay Davidson) and both ended up getting "artist development" deals which meant they wouldn't be needing a drummer for quite a while. Consequently, I had been dating Julie (she was from Minneapolis and I'd fly up to visit her when I could scrape a few pennies together) and we had decided to get married and I figured the time was right to call the music career quits and see if I could get a career started there in Minneapolis using my computer background. (A few years earlier, Ben had been gracious enough to pull me into his computer game music company where I learned a great deal and it sparked my interest in computers)

I settled into normal family life and my corporate IT career was progressing nicely, but after being in Minneapolis for a few years, I started getting calls on a regular basis from guys back home I'd played with, telling me of the big-time gig they'd just landed. When my friends would roll into town with the artists they were playing with, Julie and I would go an hang out backstage and visit and I started thinking "what if?". Julie and I started talking about moving to Nashville and she was nice enough to have the "you only live once" attitude, so we sold the house we'd just built, quit the jobs that we loved, pulled our kids out of school, and moved to Nashville.

I started beating the bushes and landed a couple of house gigs downtown and found myself playing with Alan Jackson's piano player one night, to Toby Keith's guitar player the next. I met a lot of great players in a short amount of time and landed an audition with a new artist on the DreamWorks label - Mike Walker. I beat out quite a few players to get the gig in true American Idol fashion (full blown theater setup, full PA, record label execs sitting on leather couches beside the sound stage taking notes) and we hit the road as the opening band on the Brooks and Dunn Neon Circus tour with Toby Keith, Keith Urban, and Montgomery Gentry.

It was such a blast and such a feeling of accomplishment to be rolling down the road in my tour bus bunk for the first time on a major tour. I'll never forget the thrill of playing for crowds of people that go on for farther than I could see or all the nights I got to play with the other artists on the tour at impromptu shows we'd do for radio stations at clubs...and getting to know some of the biggest names in country music on a personal level during lunch, playing basketball, or sharing musical ideas in the bus. After a couple of years of living the life I'd always dreamed of, I realized that the grind and uncertainty wasn't what I was looking for long-term (and Julie and the kids were missing Minneapolis and the family members we'd left behind), so we loaded up and came back to "normal life" in Minnesota.

I'm back to being a Systems Engineer (computer stuff) for a large mortgage company and my drums have barely left the basement of my house since I moved back 4 years ago. I was lucky enough to re- discover Rush and by accident I found myself playing along to Moving Pictures one day and the thrill of first learning how to play came back to me. I had bragged (ignorantly!) for years that I could play any Rush tune, so I decided that my motivation to continue drumming would be to try to put my money where my mouth had been all those years. I posted the audio from my first hideous attempt of trying to get through Tom Sawyer (as captured by my video camera) on the Rush board in the "Musician's" section and the next day I was beyond shocked and amazed to find that other players I'd never met had added their tracks to mine and it actually resembled the original song! Wow! What if we actually put some effort into this!! This freaky, online collaboration that the four of us have had going for the past few months has been a blast and it's a dream come true to have recordings of myself playing Rush tunes with other great musicians. The fun part is hearing the songs come together piece by piece as we all add our parts and they get mixed and tweaked in Dr. Raven's laboratory. Hopefully, this will continue until we've done the entire Rush catalog.

Gear & Recording Setup