I was born with it

Not as much anymore as I am a recovering alcoholic and don't feel confident in a bar or club yet. I wish I could just jump right up to the stadiums and arenas ;-} ...lol

It is the much deserved karma to the record industry who scammed us all with the introduction of CDs. The cut their production costs in half but doubled the prices. They deserve this.

It would have to be one heck of a deal... It would have to set me up for life.

I picked up my first guitar at about age 10, it was a classical guitar that my father bought in the sixties. It was a piece of crap but I loved it. I started making melodies with it right away though I had no idea what I was doing. At about the same time I started dabbling as aimlessly on my sister Elizabeth's piano, making simple melodies.

At age 14 my brother-in-law Marcel gave me his electric guitar as a Christmas present. It was a 'Raven', a cheap Stratocaster knock-off that more than served it's purpose for the next few years. I decided at that time that I would be a rock star. Growing up in New York City, and now the owner of a cool looking electric guitar, it didn't seem that far-fetched. By the time I got to high school I had done a whole lot of talking about how I was going to be a rock-star, but I hadn't done much about it.

Since I was still twanging around aimlessly, between my freshman and sophomore year I took guitar lessons. The teacher taught me the basics of reading music and had me tapping my foot and picking-away to Mel Bay renditions of 'Mary Had A Little Lamb', and other beginner classics before my cool rock star visualizations began to fade. Before too long I said 'F*** This!' and went to my last lesson. In that last Lesson I said to the teacher, "I just wanna Jam!" -- after which he taught me some open chords, some simple power chords, and the pentatonic scale... It was all over after that, I was hooked and there was no turning back.

I went back to school ready to rock and to talk a whole lot more about how I was gonna be a rock star, but still I didn't do much about it. It wasn't until later on that year that a friend from school, John Wanamaker, (who had no doubt heard me talking about how I was gonna be a rock star) approached me after he had gotten an electric guitar for Christmas and asked me to teach him some basics, he said that he wanted to start a band... Together, we did just that. We pooled our limited knowledge with our friends Greg O'Bradovich and Alex Hamilton, and began writing songs pretty quickly under the name, The Vitals.

The Vitals survived a couple years before a falling-out between myself and bassist Greg O'Bradovich brought the band to an abrupt halt about the same time we were supposed to head out to college. I hung out for about a year after high school working in retail which enabled me to save up enough to buy a 4-track recorder. Once in hand, I began writing songs like a maniac. I even got together with Vitals guitar player John Wanamaker to collaborate on some pretty original and eclectic stuff -- but I was back to talking a lot about how I was going to be a rock-star with no plan.

It was about that time that I reluctantly headed off to college but quickly got into a band. That band was called Tantrum, we tooled around the northwestern Pennsylvania bar-circuit playing cover-tunes and some originals before the discipline wore out. I then teamed up with college friends Ed Raymer, Mark Ianuzzo, David Timpe, and Dave Hanlin to form a band called Orchards Madness, an acid rock improv-band that found it's acclaim playing frat parties and local bars in Erie, PA. After a couple years of that I actually graduated from college and found myself at age 23 talking a lot about how I was going to be a rock-star but still had no serious plan to make it happen.

It was about that time that I teamed up with John and Alex from The Vitals in NYC and recorded my first serious demo. That demo prompted my move (new wife and all) back to New York to finally make a serious go at my dream. I did just that, I gave it my all. The Vitals regrouped with new Bass Player Kris Kohler and began playing the NYC club circuit like mad. After about a year and a half of that, Kris Kohler left to start her own band, and after a brief bout as a power trio with John on bass, we found Bassist - John Helwig and turned towards a grungier hard-rock sound. With the new bassist and the new sound came a new name -- Zen Bender. The Zen Bender story is spelled out on the band's still existent home page at http://zenbender.com/band.htm

I love a great hard rock guitar sound and then I also like a well miked acoustic guitar. I also love to add traces of keyboard or synth. I love bands like Staind who really mix up the crunchy and the melodic so well. I also love Tonic, and Soundgarden, and Days Of the New for the way they mix it all up too. A touch of funk is something I like to throw in too.

Anywhere untouched and tropical.