Music Stuff

As many of you know, I have been playing a lot of shows with my friend, Cami. We have basically been playing one show every week and it has be a ton of fun. We have encountered just about every problem you can expect from live performance situations, but it is always a good learning experience. I already have tons of experience doing live performances as I have been playing in bands for 15 years now, but this has still been a learning experience because I am a little out of my element. I usually play on electric guitar or a full drumset, but now I am playing acoustic and my cajón. My rock band has been playing so long that we can improvise hours of music without needing to practice, and we can read each other's cues to know what to do in live situations. I am starting to get to that point with Cami, but I think I still need a lot more practice. We are currently recording an album, and it is pretty exciting because I think it has a lot of potential.

Lately, I have been thinking about what got me started playing music. It was the mid '90's, and I was getting into a lot of rock bands that were not just bands that my parents listened to. I have to give my parents credit for raising me on great music like Led Zeppelin, Boston, CCR, ELO, Bad Company, Journey, etc. One of the first bands I really got into that was modern rock was the Gin Blossoms. I was living in Arizona at the time, and they were a local AZ band that was starting to break out. Then I got really into the Smashing Pumpkins when "Siamese Dream" came out. I remember listening to it when I would roll up the newspapers for my paper route. I was 11 years old then. Then Nirvana became huge and I was obsessed with them. I remember listening to "Nevermind" every day before heading off to football practice in 7th grade. I started thinking maybe I should try to learn how to play guitar. My older brother took a guitar class and asked for a guitar for Christmas that year. To my surprise, I also got an electric guitar of my very own. I had never taken a class and knew absolutely nothing about guitar. I read about how to tune and then quickly learned "Everything Zen" by Bush on Christmas morning. I am sure it sounded terrible, but I thought I was awesome.

After just playing around for a few weeks I started learning about how to read tablature, and I would practice along to songs as I listened to them. I specifically remember ditching church one Sunday and just sitting down and learning all of "Come Out and Play" by the Offspring. It was at that point that I started trying to make up my own riffs. Most of my first riffs were based off of three-chord structures that were very simple, probably because I was listening to Green Day's "Dookie" a lot in those days. If you want to learn how to play guitar, I suggest learning Green Day songs first because you can learn a whole album in about an hour without any real guitar skills.

Fast forward one year to the next Christmas. At that point, my older brother and I had been writing songs for a while and wanted to record some stuff. My younger brother got a bass guitar for Christmas that year, and my friend, Riley Trickey, got a drumset. Riley had been playing guitar for a little longer than me, so we went up to his ranch to record some songs. Since nobody played drums, I hopped on Riley's set and tried to figure out some drum beats. We recorded a handfull of songs that we thought were awesome. They were really just collections of riffs put together rather than actual songs. However, a few of those riffs became the basis for our first real songs. Since drummers are always in short supply, I decided to focus more of my attention on becoming a drummer. I still switch off between guitar and drums, and I can't say that I enjoy one more than the other because I love both.

Over the last 15 years, I have played in a number of bands spanning many genres, and I have written or helped write hundreds of songs. I have recorded the equivalent of 8 albums. I have played tons of shows ranging in size from 5 to 5,000 people. Still, I don't know what I am supposed to be doing with my talents. I keep wondering if this is something that is just a hobby to keep myself occupied so I don't get into trouble, or if maybe I have songs that could somehow benefit somebody else. I honestly believe music can be a great source of inspiration and/or comfort to people in tough situations, so I wonder if maybe I have something to say that will resonate with others. Whatever the case is, I really enjoy making music, even if I am the only one who is going to hear it. So we shall see where these new musical opportunities will take me.