I was born in Paris, Texas in 1978 and lived there until I was ten. I was a normal kid. I liked to swim, ride bikes, and play baseball. I occasionally threatened to run away from home but it never amounted to anything. Paris is a small town, but not that small. Even if I would've run away, someone would've brought me back. Everyone there knows everyone.
My father was a businessman and entrepreneur. I remember him working all kinds of jobs. He managed a cable company, sold cars, hot tubs, and houses. But I think he was most interested in selling his ideas. And the main one that got the ball rolling was selling Yellow Pages. He started a telephone book publishing company with a childhood friend and moved my mom, my brother, and me down to Louisiana. Lake Charles. Port town. Riverboat gambling. Big bridges. Big fish. And for my family, the Big Time.
Life was good in Louisiana. I was too young and resilient to be forever bruised by the move. I remember looking out the back window of the car as we rolled away, but that's about it. Soon enough, I made friends, made enemies, and even made out with my first girlfriend. You could say I had it made. Like I said, life was good.
And then suddenly, I had what Joseph Campbell talks about when he mentions the psychological trauma that sometimes turns an individual inward towards of life of imagination and creation....
I moved again. This time to Minnesota. With little notice. Just a few days before high school started. I barely knew what town I lived in. I was stunned and shocked and isolated. My old life was a fading memory. Plus, I had a southern drawl that made me relatively incomprehensible to most people my age. Life was...well...hard.
My mom could see it in my eyes. So for Christmas that year, she got me a guitar and an amplifier. I had never played music before but I quickly realized that it was something I loved. I started a garage band with some guys in the neighborhood and away we went. We were our own little gang. And I stayed home and locked myself in my bedroom and played along with records until I fell asleep. The guitar became a part of my body. Life became good again.
My dad gave me a Gibson Les Paul Standard for my sixteenth birthday. It is the guitar I still play to this day. A few months later, he made a call to tell us he wasn't coming home. My parents were over. It sort of felt like part of life itself was over. The divorce was drawn out and difficult and a little crazy. I buried myself in music and sports and long drives at night by myself, listening to my favorite records and singing along. I guess you could say I was unknowingly sowing the seeds of songwriting.
It wasn't until college and a bad case of influenza that I decided writing songs would be my path. I burned the candle pretty hard during those days and was consistently depressed and apathetic. One time, I think I took it a little too far and was bedridden and sick for a week. Late at night, amidst a fever dream, I could hear something in me telling me that I can and should write and sing songs. It was a quiet voice, but it had a persistence to it that was hard to ignore. When I got better, I started to really learn how my favorite music was put together. Up to that point, I had really just seen myself as a guitar player who desperately wanted to be in a band. Now I was a guitar player who wanted to be a songwriter who desperately wanted to be in a band. So I started writing.
I suppose you could say the rest is history. There's all kinds of things I left out. People who helped me along the way, bumps and bright spots, tears and laughter. But you get it: I love music. It is what gave meaning to my life during times when meaning was lost and confused. So, out of gratitude, I've devoted my life to it. Might as well.
Oh, and I love writing. And having a band that can make a noise. It really is like having your own gang. A good gang. Like a family.
Life is interesting.
