Bio

Hometown:	Tampa Bay area in FL
School:	Life

As a kid age 10 or so, back in the 70's, I started diving into my parent's vinyls and eventually 8 track cassettes (!). They had a pretty varied pallet, from classical to Cat Stevens, Pink Floyd, Beatles and all sorts of other stuff.

I was lucky in that my parents jettisoned our TV when I was still a lad. There were no DVD or even VHS players then, much less TIVO so if you weren't watching network TV, you weren't watching. Well Dad figured that was all hypno-crap (he was right then and it's still true today--there's just more of it) so he traded in our TV for a good stereo.

This was a pretty defining moment for me, in terms of my experience with music. If I wasn't out playing with my friends, I had some headphones on and was blaring whatever I could get my hands on at the time.

Later, when I went to the Delphian School in Oregon, a private prep school, we had kids coming in from all corners of the globe, bringing some phat tunage with them. One of my best friends then was Thad Corea, Chick's son, for example. He always had something interesting on. But there were guys coming in from Japan and all sorts of other countries. It was great!

Jazz grew on me quickly. I found I could really immerse myself in it and there was so much going on with that music it was far more engaging to me. To be even remotely worth listening to as a jazz artist, you have to be pretty competent. So you get a kind of musical cooperation you don't get to experience as often with other genres, barring classical which is a whole different experience. The other thing I like about jazz is the melodies have a tendency to really move you along in time. If jazz were an amusement park ride, it would definitely be a Six Flags roller coaster.

I love almost all forms of music though, even some rap (just please don't drive through my 'hood with the subs turned up to 11 on the Obnoxious Scale).