It all started in Hollywood for a Southern California skateboard kid, turned rock drummer, turned rock guitar player at 15, and then it was on! Hollywood, to the Bay Area Metal scene, to Seattle, a West Coast guitar player, writer, producer, still independently kicking ass independently, without the suits!
The old Hollywood Guitar Center in ‘83-‘85 and the move to the new location, was were a lot of my switch from being a teen drummer with a lot of potential, to being a seriously die hard guitar player when I was in high school took off! I was in it entirely for the music!!
I was always into guitar growing up but I didn’t have a guitar. I worked Spring Breaks, Summer Vacations, any spare breaks to work for my uncle at his place, and doing odd jobs for then Hollywood Guitar Center Manager James Fox who was probably the nicest guy in Hollywood and a close family friend, and still is to this day!
I met so many incredible musicians there and in those days the sales guy could blaze it up to show a customer a guitar or amp and Marq Torien worked there at the time (played for Ratt, Ozzy, and others) and he would have this big smile on his face playing Van Halen in the badass way he did! Great place to learn everything I could as a kid!
The new location got the Rock Walk hand prints out front, and Eddie of course was featured. I remember putting my hands in his hand prints and my hands are identical to Eddie’s! Haha
I figured as a 16 year old kid that if he could reach those stretches, so could I, and nothing could stop me! Haha
My determination and crazy work ethic made my development as a guitar player and writer take off, and by the time I was 17 I got accepted to GIT Musicians Institute in Hollywood and received an awesome letter from them expressing how much they liked my application package for school which was a lot that they asked for, and I added demos of songs I recorded on a old reel to reel with my ‘81 Charvel.
All of that had started just 3 years before that when I switched from drums to guitar and my uncle & James Fox helped me earn money for my first Marshall, my first guitar with a Floyd Rose & Seymour Duncan pickups. Ernie Ball strings, so much of what I’ve loved my whole career started there, and I am thankful every day to James Fox, and Marq Torien, Marc Danzeisen, guys like Rick from Boomerang (incredible Jeff Beck style player!!) who taught me how to work in the studio, who I had also met through James!
Rick had Ronnie James Dio and Carmine Appice come down to the studio at the sessions I was doing solos for with Rick producing & engineering, which was a surreal experience for my first studio sessions! Haha
They were really nice guys, especially Ronnie who I had incredible respect for with the singer he was going back to his stuff with Richie Blackmore and then Black Sabbath, and the amazing stuff he did with Vivian Campbell in Dio. After that start, no situation felt too big since recording solos with Ronnie and Carmine there (who had worked with Jeff Beck!!) everything after that all I had to do was say I recorded my first solos in a real studio with that, I was cool as the other side of the pillow! Haha
Getting in a zone starts by knowing you can do it! Knowing you can do it comes from doing the big time work and all in commitment to the craft to learn how to just go for it and let the feeling light the way!!
Thank you James, Marq, Marc, Rick, and everyone else that helped me on my journey from from Jeff in Santa Cruz that taught me most of my music theory I know, when I couldn't afford to go to school at GIT after being accepted and he really helped me make up the group I lost, and to Paul Gilbert who would have been my teacher at GIT, but who later on several occasions taught me some incredibly easy, yet massively useful musical & rhythmic concepts, like only he can! For a guy than can really fly, he knows gritty expression, and that is exactly what the way I like to play!!