Ok-- Here goes: started playing Piano when I was a kid, memorized Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis', "Live at Madison Square Garden" in the backseat of my Mom and Dad's brown station wagon...listened to one of the only soul stations in Milwaukee with the radio tucked beneath my pillow at night....sang in my catholic grade school choir and went on to musicals and plays in high school, -----cut to meeting a prolific bass player and writer by the name of Sunne Souders in Seattle----after hearing me sing in my basement (good acoustics(!) she believed enough to write an album with me--- her beloved mother put a second mortgage on the house to pay for the recording...with that full album done, I sent it out and got a record deal shortly thereafter with a independent record label, Ichiban Records out of Atlanta...after scoring a few minor hit's with "Slip 'N Slide" and "As I Watch U Dance", and selling over 100,000 units, I refined my chops as a performer by touring all over the states and Canada in small clubs and venues. The label eventually went under, but my experience with Ichiban was invaluable...as a writer, as a performer, and as an artist in the music business...

Cut to living in downtown San Francisco, rebuilding my career, and trying to figure out where to go from here.....if I only could figure it out...left for LA shortly thereafter...looking for producer's to work with,... CraigsList anyone?.......With the help of other producers and writers, I created songs that I was told were "Hit" worthy" -I Met many people who said that I needed to "dumb down" the lyrics, telling me that if I didn't sing about someone, "getting up all in my grill" I was gonna get no-where in today's music ...there I was, standing on dirty socks, in a closet of a producer who was going "somewhere" in LA.... and I could have been backstage at an annie lennox ....it was more than frustrating...it was uninspiring and defeating...gone were the days of just loving an idea and developing it... Now it was about "hurry up--write the lyric - get in, get out and be done with it - it was a factory, and there was no time to listen to what the lyrics were saying, having the track complement that and standing back to listen what the song needed...I'm a big believer of songs telling you what they need...they have a life of there own...and trying to run where lightening has struck before, usually means your dead before you've even started....so there I was...listening to people that had "something going"....but I was having trouble hearing my own voice, above the clamor of "need a hit" and "it's gotta be hot"....somehow, it seemed I wasn't listening to the person that mattered most...

After putting together a few songs that people in the know told me I had a "hit" I, sent it out to a few people.....nothing....nothing for a long time.....................what now...I asked myself....did I really love this stuff, this music? I Thought I it was good enough and what the market was bearing....but something was telling me, I was missing something, a step.....

Cut to: Life changing moment: (yes, I can actually call it that---as silly as that sounds) I Happened upon an art show one day, on my birthday ----(it was the gift that I happened to need --I just didn't know it at the time)------it was photographer Gregory Colbert's exhibition, "Ashes and Snow"--------and-------------------------------- it moved me, I was silent, as I walked through the aisle's, I was transfixed on not only the images but what they said...it took 10 years for this particular photographer to put this work together...10 years...the images were powerful...but what struck me was the love he put in his images....clearly he LOVED what he did----what he choose to capture, what he choose to "paint," the time he took...he waited till he got what he wanted - and isn't that what creating should be about anyway....he didn't create something that people "should" like, what's cool, what's currently "hip" ---he created for himself...and then I got it....go within......listen, for the love of God...and after that....................was there anything I had to say...?

I decided I wanted to create a record that if no one ever heard it, that would be fine with me...as long as I loved it, that's all that mattered... I give many thanks to that photographer...

Music that's moved me to a new level of appreciating how far I could take it: D'Angelo's song, ""Untitled (How does it feel) was a huge turning point.....other artists that were breaking some boundaries....India.Arie, Eryka Badu, I've been a big fan of Amel Larrieux's for years....Sade, Maxwell, Eric Benet, Jill Scott, Tamia, etc......artists that are reaching to the stratosphere today: Corrine Baily Rae, my man, Robin Thicke, and Sia......artists that sing to their beat of their own drum: Shelby Lynne, Annie Lennox and Meshell ndegeocello... I wish I could have heard Miss Dinah Washington sing in my day, but thank God her recordings are still as fresh as they day she sung them...

...the songs that are closest to my heart: "I Want More" was written when I had nothing going on...and I wasn't sure if I was going to continue....re-making one of my favorite songs, the Darryl Hall and John Oates classic, "She's Gone" ....The Woman Inside", "Bye Bye" to a relationship gone on way to long...and "Love Won't Take Us Back" ....of course they're are some pop ditties in there for fun, Shelly Peiken's "Love As You Know It' from "What a girl Wants" and "Bitch" fame....and I was commissioned to re-make "Danny boy" for the short film, "the Hurling Stick"...which now has rumblings of being picked up for a soundtrack for a feature film...

So....with that, here I am...thankful, in one piece, grateful for the journey, the lessons, my friends and family, etc...Seriously, life's getting pretty fun now......so here is the music....and with that, my advice to anyone who wants to know how to navigate the perils of the music industry or for the matter, life itself...

Just do what moves you..................the rest will take care of itself.