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I grew up listening to my parents' Beatles, Miles, Thelonius,
Hendrix and Airplane LPs in Cincinnati, Ohio. Despite my parents'
best efforts to make me a child drummer at the Cincinnati Conservatory,
it wasn't until early 80's punk and hardcore inspired me that
I wanted to be a musician.
I was in love with the Dead Kennedys, 7Seconds and Minor Threat:
intensely emotional and unapologetic political music. After teaching
myself a few chords on Dad's Harmony guitar, I rented my first
bass guitar and started playing in bands. It was a Yamaha BB-300
bass, inspired by the Fender Precision bass, but with a cooler
body.
I was a skateboarder and my music fit well with that kind of
activity. I learned to build beautiful ramps--this helped a lot
later on when I started to design and build studios. Hip Hop was
starting to hit the mainstream around this time and Public Enemy blew me away. It had the intensity and the anger of political
hardcore, but a fresh new sound. BDP was another favorite skating
music: it just seems to go with the motions.
In 1990, I moved to Boston, to attend Tufts. I worked for Tufts'
production company and cut my teeth in live sound reinforcement
and mixing. I joined a ska/rock band, Thumper. We played
reggae versions of 70's funk and a bunch of originals. This was
the first band that I played in that had a lot of fans. The stage
experience was a bigger rush than anything else I had ever experienced.
We recorded a CD with Joe Cuneo at Downtown Recorders. He recorded
the Pixies' Doolittle, so we all worshipped him. The CD did well, but tensions
in the band pervaded and I left the group in 1992.
I became a music major. I studied contrabass, harmony, voiceleading,
music history. I composed for chamber instruments. I was still
playing in bands, but now I was really experimental. I played
a lot of freely improvised music with the New Music Ensemble,
Freekola and a few highly memorable moments with John Lockwood
and Joe Maneri.
I ended up earning my BA and my MA in music composition from Tufts. Soon after graduation in 1997 I formed Nineteen, a band
which I would lead and tour with until 2000. I started recording
and producing hip hop in 1998 when my recording studio in Medford
was completed.
Indecent Music is the label and production house I run out of
my house. I created it to release my own records, but I did put
out a few others. I produce rock and hip hop recordings and a
smattering of other types of music at Indecent. I record digital
to Cakewalk's Sonar and I have some superior mics and tube preamps
that really sweeten the sounds.
In 2005 I became a professor at The New England Institute of
Art. I am still writing songs, producing instrumentals for hip
hop performers and teaching musicians and engineers how to improve
themselves. |
