I was born on May 30, 1972. Childhood held many fond memories and
influences for me. My father was a music major in college and is a jazz
woodwind player. He also owned Harris Music store in the Atlanta area.
I remember spending a lot of time there. The shopping complex where his store
was located had a movie theater, a record store, and a drug store. So when the
music stuff got boring, I was in the record store looking at Kiss albums or in
the movie theater watching Star Wars for the fourth or fifth time. I also
remember my father giving me and my older brother only one dollar to go down
to the drug store to buy a coke and candy bar for each of us. If he gave us two
dollars, then it was toy time. The drug store had one of those inexpensive toy
sections. The most memorable time in the store is when I had thrown a few
coins into my mouth. You can guess what came next. I started to choke with a
coin lodged in my throat. My parents ran to my rescue. Mom had her finger
down my throat and dad had me bent over his leg beating on my back. Luck
was on my side that day. The coin flew out of my mouth and I swore to never
put a coin in my mouth ever again. I learned at a young age that money has the
power to kill.
When I was five, my parents gave up the store and moved us to St.
Petersburg, FL. My father continued to work in the music business with other
music stores in the Tampa bay area and worked gigs with his horns. Like most
kids, I played out side with the other kids in the neighborhood and hated
homework. While in third grade I chose to learn to play the trumpet, after a year
of this, no lessons either, I decided to learn percussion. Formal drum lessons
started at age 9 in the forth grade. My first teacher was actually named Mr.
Drum. I remember lessons in reading and rudiments. One of his first lessons,
he would have us put white chalk on the tips of our sticks, play 5 and 9 stroke
rolls and count the white marks on our practice pads.
I was lucky enough to experience my first job at age 10. For two years I was a
paperboy for the Evening Independent, which was the afternoon edition of the
St. Petersburg Times. My job consisted of riding my bike up and down 54th Ave
and 58th Street, visiting bars and selling papers to their customers. The paper
cost 15 cents, the boss got a dime and I got a nickel plus tips. What great
stories I have to tell about this one. Christmas Eve was the best. I would work
all day and almost every customer would give me a dollar for each newspaper. I
would ride my bike home and empty my pockets to make room for more money.
I think I visited each bar 3 times that day.
Video games were important part of my childhood. I grew up with the Atari
2600, and then moved on to the Commodore 64. With a pocket full of quarters
that I made on my paper route, much time was spent at the arcades. I also
played sports. I spent two years playing little league soccer. I loved the
practice and the games. After soccer, it was time to get serious about my
drumming.
Most of middle school was spent with drum lessons and skateboarding. I
remember the bones brigade videos with young Tony Hawk. One family allowed
the kids in the neighborhood to build a half pipe in the back yard. Many hours
were spent building, skating, wreaking, and repairing the half pipe. These were
great times.
I attended Dixie Hollins High School. After the freshmen year, the
skateboarding lost its place to cars and jobs. My neighborhood friends were
growing up and each of us started going different ways. My first teen job was
at Winn Dixie bagging groceries and chasing shopping carts. One night, the
manager had me mopping up blood from the meat department. Not a spill, but a
pool of blood, I felt like I was cleaning up a crime scene. I dropped the mop,
walked out, and never returned. My next job was at AMC Theater at Tyrone
Square Mall. Here I developed a deeper passion for entertainment. My senior
year my new girlfriend got me a job working for a video store called Video
Premier in Seminole.
In my last semester of my senior year, I landed my first professional teaching
job at Boca Ceiga High School under the direction of Frank Williams. During
this time, Frank Williams was the horn caption head of The Cadets. I spent
three years teaching under his guidance. All of us who has every worked with
Frank would say there is a fine line between genius and mad. His musical
influence will follow me to my grave.
Along with teaching, I would always have another job. I went back to AMC for
a little while and then found a job a Westcoast Video. During this job, I meet a
customer who taught Aikido. Aikido is a Japanese martial art that is very
complex. I feel in love with the defensive techniques that we learned. The life
lessons that I got from Aikido has made me into what I am today. I apply aikido
to my everyday life and it in evident in my drumming.
Along with teaching, I started my higher education at St. Petersburg Jr.
College pursuing a degree in business. Shortly my education took a back seat
to Drum and Bugle Corps (DCI). Drum corps is considered to be top gun of
marching bands. It is a national youth organization consisting of corps from all
over the country which competes at major arenas all summer long across the
US. I marched with the Magic of Orlando. We would meet once or twice a month
during the winter to practice. When school got out, drum corps became my life.
A typical day started by getting woken up at 7am on a school gymnasium floor.
After breakfast, the corps would do a long stretch and muscle toning workout.
Then hours of marching practice with a 35 pound or heavier drum strapped to
your waist would follow. Lunch consisted of a walk to the chuck wagon, gab a
sandwich, and eat it on the way back to drumline practice. We did more hours
of drumming and marching till it was time for dinner. Sunburn was on top of
sunburns. We had an hour or so to eat, shower, get into uniform, and be on the
buses ready for the next show. We would unload the buses, report to warm up
and prepare for the show. After the show and the award ceremony, we would
load up the buses, sleep 4 hours on the bus, arrive at another school, sleep
some more on the gym floor, and start all over again. The overweight guys
would lose over 50 pounds and the skinny guys would lose up to 20 pounds.
We weren’t here for the accommodations; we were here for the love of music.
The crazy things that happen in drum corps are endless. We are talking about
having over 120 members and staff living together for over two months. Only
one can imagine what could happen in that type of environment. Drum corps
offers live lessons that can’t be experienced anywhere else.
After retuning home from the road in 1993, my percussion life took a
different turn. I entered in to the best drummer of Tampa bay contest held at a
club in Seminole. This was great, I entered in with my DCI snare drum solo and
cleaned house. One drum ruled over all those double bass set players. I was
awarded a five piece Lugwig drumset as a first place prize. Now with a new set,
it was time to start up the rock band. I stopped teaching, and when I figured out
that the band wasn’t going to pay the rent, I got a job answers phones at Home
Shopping Network.
At the network, I meet my first wife. Within less then a year, I quit the phones
and went back to the schools to teach percussion. During this time, I finished
my AA from St. Petersburg Jr. College. In December of 1995, a close childhood
friend informed me of the bucket drummers from New York in Ybor City. I
grabbed a bucket, sticks, coffee can, cowbell, and went to Ybor and started
working on my show. With so much going on, my aikido training on the mat
would have to wait. Not soon after, my son was born. Now more motivated then
ever, it was time to discover new and profitable places for my show. Three
years and twenty cities later, my daughter was born and I graduated from USF
with a degree in Business Finance. Now with college out of the way, I was time
to return to my aikido training under the United States Aikido Federation. The
marriage ended in divorce soon after. (But that is another story to tell on a
later date). For three years I took custody of both my children and continued to
push forward as a single father.
In 2005, I meet my new wife, Christen, at Clearwater beach. We fell deeply in
love. We got married on January 22, 2007. Life has been wonderful. If I was to
tell you about her, she would need her own website. She is the best.
Nowadays, i spend my time working hard to improve the bucket show (and
it's venues), and training hard in Aikido, with hopes of some day owning my
own dojo.
