The Long Winded Bio

...for those with far too much time on their hands...

Early Years

So where did the obsession with music all start?  One of my earliest memories is of me shopping with my parents at K-Mart, at the time I was four or five years old.  I don’t quite recall where I had heard of them or even if I had heard any of their music at that point, all I remember is that I had walked up to the record bin and I had a copy of Kiss Alive II in my hands.  I can somewhat remember the look on my mothers face when she first looked at it, the picture on the back cover of Gene Simmons covered in fake blood, face painted like a demon, soaking wet with sweat.  If it had been up to them I probably would have been getting a copy of The Bee Gees Greatest Hits which was their idea of rock n’ roll at the time. 

Well regardless of their reactions, I went home that night with the record and my fascination with music began.  Today I still have the record packed away in the basement, the cover dented from me using pencils as drum sticks and playing along with the recording.  My family was not at all musical; really just music fans at best, although I could question some of those decisions as well.  My parents musical tastes consisted of various music of the 50’s and 60’s, really just the teen pop material of the time, grown men singing about sweet 16 year olds and such.  In addition to that I was hearing stuff like Kenny Rogers, Dolly Pardon, Conway Twitty, and several other old time country stars that I have done my best to strike from memory all these years later.  My sisters helped a little bit, they were at least listening to the popular music of the time, although I would not consider it the best selection in music.  Music like The Bee Gees, Andy Gibb, Leaf Garrett, Bread, Air Supply, and I actually recall at one point one of them having a copy of The Beatles 1962-1966 album around, which may have been the only sane musical selection in the house up to that point.  Well maybe I’m being a little harsh it wasn’t all THAT bad, except for the country part. 

That is what I had to work with however, and now I was adding Kiss to the mix.  I’d sit in front of the record player for hours with head phones on, rocking back and forth and singing along at the top of my lungs.  I’d pretend I was playing drums along with the recordings, I’d play air guitar, in my own head I’d be a rock star.  Well so much for day dreaming. 

So it would be several years before I would start any formal musical training.  I started drum lessons when I was in sixth grade and shortly after began playing in the school bands.  All through high school I played the dual roll of band geek and sports jock.  Coming from a small school that option was available to me so I split my time between sports and music.  It wasn’t until later in my high school career that I decided that I would like to go to music school once I graduated.  It was also during my junior year of high school that I began playing in my first ever rock band with friends Dave Woodward and Terry Hazelton.  It was after a marching band trip where we decided we would get together, Dave playing bass, Terry playing guitar, and myself on drums.  That afternoon we got together in my parents garage and began making music, or noise depending on whether you asked us or the neighbors.  It wasn’t spectacular, but those early rock n’ roll days went a long way in helping shape my musical future, little did I know, there was still a lot to learn.  

College Years

I think I had been away from home for at the most 5 days during my entire life; basketball camp one summer when I was in 10th or 11th grade.  Well now, the quiet little "momma's boy" was being driven out of "farm town", USA and dropped off in the city of Syracuse, NY.  Talk about culture shock!  I had never met any of my roommates before; my parents had basically just set me up with a 5 person basement apartment around the corner from Onondaga Community College, since they had no dorms at the time.  I was saved only by the fact that my girlfriend was going to school on the other side of the city, of course that wasn't any use to me either after she dumped me a month later. 

Oh well, here I was, learning to make the best of a strange situation, a skill that is valuable to anyone who has had the opportunity to experience it.  All I knew was I was going to be the next rock star, or at least I thought.  I had dabbled a bit in songwriting in high school with friend and guitarist Terry Hazelton.  Since I found it quite difficult to song write from behind a drum kit I needed someone to accompany my efforts.  However, now I was going to learning piano as part of my school curriculum which I thought would make a huge difference.  Let me just tell you now, the piano skills never really developed, but more on that later.  

My first year was busy but pretty uneventful musically with the exception of seeing some great live bands.  My live music experience to that point had mostly been the local bar band playing at the high school dances, not quite what I had been looking for.  At the time though there were some great local bands in Syracuse: Crazy Diamond, Claven's Mother, Cold Sweat, Dracula Jones, and many others.  Almost every weekend we were listening to some form of live music or another, and needless to say I learned a lot just from paying attention.  That summer, I headed back home and hooked up once again with Terry and we decided to try and put something together musically.  So between the two of us and a rotating cast of other players, we managed to play gigs throughout the entire summer.  It was over the course of that time that I talked Terry into joining me at school the following year and we ended up living together in that same basement apartment I had lived in my freshman year.  That year seemed to be much like the year before, watching a lot of live music and although we never put a band of our own together, we took what we saw and planned our next step towards rock stardom. 

After that year, I transferred to The Crane School of Music at Potsdam State, which again was busy yet uneventful musically.  It wasn’t until my second year that the band scene began to look up for me.  Terry transferred to Potsdam as well and it was there that we met Chuck Noreault who became the missing band mate we had been looking for.  So with the three of us, Terry on guitar, Chuck on bass, and myself on drums, we formed the band Intrepid.  We began writing tunes and were pretty much playing almost every weekend at one bar or frat party or another.  We would eventually record and album and play a couple gigs that we thought at the time were pretty big.  The first was opening up for an semi-popular LA based band Sister Machine Gun, who’s big claim to fame was a track on the Mortal Combat soundtrack.  The second was an opening gig for the 80’s hair band LA Guns.  We thought it was the greatest thing, but it really didn’t do anything for our musical career, we were pretty much gophers for the day, setting up gear, moving equipment, and as a reward we got to play for a half hour. 

Well aside from all that this time went a long way towards improving my songwriting skills.  Not only were we writing and arranging as a group, I also began to learn guitar, so I could do my own writing.  It was a slow process for me, but I was usually sitting around with a guitar more then I was playing drums it seemed at times.  Listening to Dave Matthews, Paul Simon, The Beatles, it was that music that really taught me how to play.  I would pick a song by someone that I really wanted to play and I’d start the slow process of learning it.  From there, the things I would learn in those songs I would then turn around and use in my own writing. 

I learned early on that songwriting, like anything else, was a lot of trial and error.  I’d say for every decent song I wrote, I’d write about 4 or 5 clunkers.  This process went on for a while, and in all honesty, is still going on today.  Songwriting is an art that you truly don’t perfect, there is always room for improvement and change and so I consider myself still very much a student of that art today.  These days I’ve turned to writers like Glen Phillips, Willy Porter, Brian Vander Ark, Warren Haynes, and others to learn the craft.

NYC/Central NY Days

So after college, I relocated back to Central New York.  At that point, Intrepid had disbanded and the three of us had gone in separate directions.  I had been doing a lot of writing on my own as well as playing solo gigs, usually for free, in coffee houses.  It really did help me stretch my material though. 

While in Syracuse, doing the solo thing, I was contacted by friend and former bass player, Chuck Noreault, who at the time was living in Ithica.  The distance between us didn’t make for the best situation, but we decided to give it a go and see if we could put something new together.  We enlisted Chuck’s younger brother Joel to play bass with us and we formed a band, which at the time we called The Groove.  That name would change several times during that year; we eventually settled on the name Seven and hit the studio to record a demo.  With demo in hand we began booking gigs in the Syracuse and Ithica areas, then an opportunity came up that we couldn’t say no to. 

About six months later, we were packing our bags and moving to New York City.  I got an apartment with a former co-worker in Woodside Queens, while Chuck started out living with his girlfriend in Brooklyn Heights.  Needless to say, their relationship ended shortly after that and the next thing I know, there were three of us sharing a one bedroom walk up in Queens, Chuck living full-time on the couch.  Chuck and I did a lot of writing and recording during this time, there wasn’t much else to do, we were too broke to take advantage of all that NYC had to offer, but we did our best to sample what we could. 

It wasn’t long before Chuck, Joel and I, now named Fritz, played our first New York City gig at The Spiral Lounge on Houston Street, in lower Manhattan.   Things went over very well there and it became a regular spot for us.  We also got opportunities to play at other Manhattan clubs like The Acme Underground, Kenny’s Castaways, The Orange Bear, and others, but The Spiral always seemed to be our regular spot.  Patiently we waited for that right music industry person to stumble upon us, but it never happened.  Becoming increasingly frustrated, we eventually split as a group, and after a year of the NYC life, I found myself back in Syracuse. 

Shortly after moving back, I answered an ad in the paper for a band looking for a drummer.  The bands name was Rattlebasket, fresh off many big opening sets including a set on the main stage at Woodstock ’99 in Rome, NY, they had parted ways with their drummer and were looking for someone to fill the spot.  After several auditions, I was brought onboard and was off playing more rock gigs.  During my days with Rattlebasket however, I wasn’t doing much writing or singing for that matter, I was strictly hired as a drummer.  It was fun for a while but eventually I wanted to get back to some of my own stuff.  So with Rattlebasket breaking up a year later, that opened up the opportunity to again do some solo work.

So for the next couple years I did just that, as well as starting yet another side project with Chuck, called The Noise which only lasted a brief time.  These years seem to have flown by and after entering the realm of fatherhood; I eventually found myself moving full circle back to Northern New York, where I continue to play and write to this day.

These Days

So these days, I find myself back where this journey all started.  Northern New York isn’t exactly the hot bed of opportunity for the proverbial songwriter, but it is home for me.  Being around my family is important, especially with a daughter who is now six years old, we have settled nicely into our lives back here.  And with technology being what it is these days, I can continue to write and record from here and try to market my music to the world via the Internet. 

It didn’t take me long to start playing gigs in the area again once I returned.  I became a regular at The Fields Coffee House and Maxfields in Potsdam.  As I began to perform regularly I also began collecting new material with the plan to go into a recording studio and for the first time, record strictly my own material.  I contacted Massena based musician/studio owner Jimmy Phillips, who has had a long successful career in the industry.  I liked what he had to offer for a small studio, with his experience as a recording engineer and musician, I felt confident we would be able to make the album I wanted to make.  What I wasn’t fully prepared for was the amount of work and money commitment it was going to take but we forged ahead. 

The recording process was a great learning experience, but progress was slow as we were hindered by several things.  The biggest being the lack of time, we could only get together once or twice a week for two hour stretches at a time.  We’d no sooner seem to get warmed up and accomplishing something then we’d have to call it a night.  We hit another road block when percussionist Raya Noreault pulled out of the project, and yes, she is Chuck’s sister.  From there we were left trying to decide what we were going to do next.  After much deliberation, I decided that I was going to change directions slightly, and we got back on track with the recording process. 

Well, two and a half years later, the album was finally finished.  It was the culmination of all I had strived for in my musical career up to that point, I finally had my name, my music, my image on a CD.  Independently recorded, and distributed, I continue to shop my material around, hoping not for rock stardom, those days have past, I’d be happier just to land a publishing deal, get some of my songs out to the public, possibly a licensing deal for a movie or television spot.  Currently I await just that opportunity, as one of the album tracks, My Own Little World, is being used in a television pilot being shopped to both FX and Showtime.  Regardless of that outcome, I will continue to write, I will continue to perform live, and I will forever enjoy where this musical journey has taken me.  My greatest gig these days is singing my daughter to sleep at night when she goes to bed, but I still long to play those sets in front of several hundred people or even just the small gigs in front of 5 to 10 people at the local coffee house.