It's a nickname that my best friends have been using since high school, I guess it kind of stuck.

Occasionally

The positive: easy for true music fans to explore and discover new music that is not deemed "hit material" by big money record execs and lame-o hit radio stations.

The negative: the death of the album as a musical document and way too much stuff to sift through

Haha.

Been playing guitar for many years, started really focusing on songwriting in the early 2000's at which point it dawned on me that I would need to try singing. Then, I got into PC-based home recording a few years later. I had dabbled with 4-track recording before that, but these days you couldn't pay me to play those recordings publicly (yikes).

Mostly modern independent rock and roll, can't stand most stuff that dominates the airwaves these days.

A Fender Strat is the only electric 6-string guitar I owned for the vast majority of the time I've played music. I recently built my own Strat-style guitar from bits and pieces, which was a nice change. For amps I have a Fender Stage 160 and a Fender Superchamp XD. For recording I like the SCXD, live I use an assortment of stomp boxes.