It's a nickname from about 10 years ago.

I love playing live, but I prefer to be prepared. I've never met another musician as prepared as I am, so every single live show I've ever played has been like pulling teeth. Since this is my own little thing, I'm not playing anything from it live.

The cat's already out of the bag. Let's say that tomorrow, a new file format was released that was secure and you couldn't copy or share without the codekey for it.. who would use it? And as file transfer speeds get quicker, we can use raw .wav format. You can't secure that.

Only for distribution. Record companies need to understand that their day in the sun is over. The technology is available for anyone to record a great sounding album for not a lot of money. It's all about distribution now.. and what better way to distribute something than in a compressed file format? Right now, I can write, record, mix, and master a song in a day. And at the end of that day, I can upload it to my website for people to hear. Let's see a record company do that.. they're too interested in telling you how they think you should sound so they can make even more money.

I've always been working on my own stuff, but I've never taken it seriously. Now that I have the ability to do something about it, I'm a bit more serious.

So many to mention, I know I'll leave a few out: Steve Harris, Cliff Burton, Billy Sheehan, Faith No More, Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Anthrax, Tommy Lee, Dream Theater, Fates Warning, King's X, Galactic Cowboys, The Beatles, Bill Hicks, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Jeff Piekarczyk, Jellyfish, Chroma Key/Kevin Moore, Flickerstick, Neal Morse..

Wow. Good question. California

Guitar: Steinberger GT3 with DiMarzio pickups and Roland GK2A synth pickup, Hohner G3T with EMG pickups, Ovation Celebrity Series acoustic, Rocktron preamps, Alesis Quadraverb effects.

Bass: Hohner B2A, Carlo Robelli DC355 8 string, Trace Elliot GP12SMX preamp.

Keyboards: Evolution MK249 MIDI controller. NI B4, NI Pro-53, Propellerheads Reason 2.0

Drums: Percussion Studio 2.04, DrumKit From Hell sampleset, custom cymbal samples.

If I can make my stuff sound this good, so can you. Help stop the release of crap.