Guitarist

Biography:

Well, I guess I will go ahead and fill this out while I'm in here. Its not like anyone will read this anyway.

I've been around music all my life. My parents were P&W leaders at church and my sister and I would go to every practice. I still remember some of those old songs even though I was about 7 the last time I actually heard them. My parents also worked for a recording studio here in parkersburg for a while called Sweetsong. They wrote and recorded jingles for local businesses. This is where I met my future wife. Her dad recorded an album here. When the studio built an addition they had a party to celebrate and that's when we first met. Fast forward 20 years and we were married, but I'm getting ahead.
After my parents left Sweetsong they built a studio in our house and recorded more jingles and some area talent. My dad always tried to get me to play guitar, but it took too much time away from my nintendo so I stepped away from music for a bit. I was an idiot apparently. When I was about 13 or so I started getting interested in music again. I started playing bass and started a band with my friends. We were awesome...ahem. We played one show (talent show) and it sucked...bad. The band split up.
My parents had a P&W band and were playing at church and starting to get asked to play at other churches. The drummer of their band decided to store an extra drum kit of his at our house for practicing. I was so excited and played it every chance I got! It came very natural to me and I love to play drums. The very first time I sat down at a drum set I was able to play a basic beat ( I used to drum on tables and desks before ever touching actual drums). I had been playing drums for about 2 weeks when the drummer for my parents band forgot he was supposed to be playing this one day at church and he didn't show up. So I decided that I would fill in. We played at church and thats when I decided I wanted to be a drummer. The actual drummer decided at some point that he didn't want to be in the band anymore so I became THE drummer. We decided to call the band Portal and we are still playing today, but after some time of gigging the old drummer decided he wanted to come back to the band. I stepped down from the kit to let him play. The old drummer quit again later, but my uncle stepped in to take his place and is the current drummer.
Around the same time I met some people who were looking for a drummer for a punk-ish band called Autopilot12. I played a few songs with them and they liked me so I joined the band. I still wanted to be in Portal so I learned a few guitar chords and started playing guitar for them. I only knew about 5 basic chords and literally learned to play guitar ON STAGE in front of people. That was very nerve racking! I wasn't really interested in guitar, but it was a family band and I was going to be going to all the gigs anyway so might as well, right? On a side note, I learned to play on a 1982 USA handmade B.C. Rich Bich with all the bells and whistles! My dad got this guitar as payment from somebody he did work for. I since traded him a really nice recording mixer for it. Its neat to own the guitar you learned on...and plus its freakin' sweet! There is a big difference between the old Rich and the cheap ones they are coming out with nowadays. I think it will be worth something someday. Anyways, back to the band stuff. We always had a lead guitar player in the band so I just played rhythm and wrote a few songs for the band. Autopilot12 lasted about 5 years and then broke up right after almost recording an album. We recorded it, but never mixed it or did any punch ins. It sounds terrible. After this I was a one band man playing guitar which isn't even the instrument I was really interested in. My soon to be wife joined the band around 2002 and we recorded an album called Deeper Reason at Sweetsong. I wrote 1 song on this album and helped write two others. I started getting a little more interested in guitar at this point and started buying guitars and amps left and right trying to find 'my sound'. We recorded another album last year called Strong God. I wrote 3 songs on this album including the title song. After this album was finished our lead guitar player decided to quit music to devote more time to his family. Now I have been promoted to "lead guitar" status and I have to learn scales, theory, modes, triads and a billion other things I should already know from playing guitar for 10 years! I never HAD to know them playing only rhythm. But I have been at it a few months and I'm starting to feel a little more confident, but I am kicking myself from not learning this stuff sooner!

Last year I 'built' a ProTools equipped recording studio in a spare bedroom in my house and have been writing some new music for Portal and a side project my wife and I are working on called Region of Moriah. She does the vocals and sometimes bass and keyboard/synth stuff. I do the guitars, sometimes bass and drums. It has a Breaking Benjamin/Paramore/Anberlin feel to it. We also turned the studio into a side business and are recording local talent. When we move I will be building an ACTUAL studio and hopefully start building a rep with it, but I will be content in just recording my own music and local talent to earn a few extra bucks.

Bored to tears yet? Because I got about 5 more pages to go....not really! If you read all of this junk you deserve a gold star! So go to the dollar store and get one!

UPDATE: I haven't been on here in a while, but while I was gone my wife and I had a baby boy. We named him Reese Christian and he was born Jan. 19 2010. He is daddy's little rocker!

Profile: fender_bender

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Biography: