Phydaux
Right now, Phydaux is just me playing most of the instruments. Hopefully I'll be able to build a complete band from it based on some of the demo stuff I have here. It's also a vehicle to let me share my music with friends I don't see on a regular basis at the moment.
Tell me about your history? How did you get where you are now?
I started joining bands in high school. I had mostly brief stints in bands due to my lack of experience and real musical training. I played keyboards with Crossroads and the Greg Stinta Band very briefly before spiraling into a variety of incomplete collaborations on keys or guitar in the punk, thrash metal and commercial rock genres.
My first long-standing band was The Burn Unit in Nashua, NH. It was three of us with me on guitar. We wrote our own stuff, as well as trying to cover Phish songs. I had never heard of Phish before joining the band, so I was thrown a copy of Junta and asked to learn it. Easy. NOT! But I did learn a lot of it.
After moving north for college, I had to sever my ties with The Burn Unit. I was directed to JD, a guy on campus who played bass. He and Corin had a band already, but they were missing a guitarist. I joined them and we called ourselves the Thirty Dirty Birds (after the Chili Peppers tune). We sucked. We worked hard and changed our name to Apartment 81 (the student apartment where JD and Corin lived) and began to rock. We were all original. We reached a pinnacle of playing a 4-hour set in the college union and the Caledonia County Fair in Vermont. Tension broke up the band.
Toward the end of that stretch, my friends Scott, Jake and Heath had lost their bassist in SadieHawkins. These guys had a revolutionary sound that was sort-of emo. I loved it. I pestered them until they let me audition for the bass gig. It went great! I was in, rewrote half the bass lines and helped write new material. We played gigs on campus, in Rochester, NH and in Saco, ME. In the end, it was a girl that caused the band to split.
Once again, I found myself in a bunch of unfinished collaborations. Scott and I worked with Mike Boyko briefly as Downtownstares and recorded one song. I also started working on some of my own music. Scott and I also tried starting a band with a brass section, with no success.
Now, I have Phydaux.
Have you performed live in front of an audience? Any special memories?
Not as of yet.
Your musical influences
The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Yes, The Doors, The Who, Dream Theater, Extreme, Jethro Tull, Phish, Randy Rhodes, Tool, a bunch more I can't even think of listing...
What equipment do you use?
Quartz AudioMaster Freeware, Fender Squire Stratocaster with bridge/neck coupling switch and Tex/Mex pickups, Roland Blues Cube.
Anything else?
I like puppies.
