Born and raised in Brookfield,
Nova Scotia, Canada. For as long as I can remember I wanted a Mickey Mouse drumset from the
Sear Christmas Wishbook, I had to be Peter Criss!!! It never happened, I never got one. I guess my parents thought
that replacing pots and pans wasn't that much trouble until I got a little older and rougher.
When I was 8 or 9 (grade 4) my folks got me a real snare drum and enrolled me in the
Brookfield Junior High School Band. This is a big deal for an Elementary School kid. I got to
walk up to the "Big Kid" School once a week after classes to rehearse with the Band.
That was cool.
The next year I got my first Kit, a 7 piece Tama Imperialstar. Who needs Mickey Mouse when
you can have the real deal in your room! I was in grade 5 and already starting to play Jazz
with the Junior High School Jazz Band. That made it 2 trips to the "Big Kid" school each week,
Tuesdays and Thursdays I believe. I was also now taking private lessons from Ed Jardine in
Truro. He was a great teacher who introduced me to Jazz and Latin. I loved going in on Wednesday
nights for my private lesson and beating the shite out of the dashboard in our GMC, Olympic Edition,
half-ton truck on the way there. Ed had a wicked Ludwig double bass kit and his rehearsal room
was lined with Jazz albums on the wall. He gave me my first Jazz album, Buddy Rich and Gene Krupa's
Drum Battle, and I still have it today.
As time progressed I was in many Jazz ensembles, one of which ended up going to the National Jazz
Competition in Toronto when I was in grade 8. That was a good time. Bought my first leather jacket there.
I was in so many Jazz combos through High School that it seemed I was spending more time at the school
than anywhere else. Music was taking over my life. I had to quit football, I didn't play as much Hockey as
I wanted to and Softball had to take a back seat to everything. I didn't let the music get in the way of the
girlfriends though, a guy has got to draw the line somewhere.
My first Rock Band was called Rough Boy. We eventually changed our name to Parental Guidance, no we
were NOT a Judas Priest tribute band, we just thought the name was cool. Our first gig was at my
uncle's place where he paid us each 20 bucks, that Ruled! With the help of our music teacher,
Rick Hiltz, we put together a promo package and managed to get ourselves booked at a few other
high schools to do dances and even proms, that's quite a feat for a bunch of teens who don't even
have a P.A. system. We managed to steal some floodlights from people's lawns at Christmas time so we'd
have a lightshow (mostly red and green).
After that I started to get a little more serious about my playing. I enrolled at St.F.X.U. to
take the Jazz program. Learned quite a bit that year but quickly found myself bored with what I was
learning and not liking the location of the School. I needed to be playing Rock and living in a
larger city.
I didn't move to the city right away, instead I was given the opportunity to play in a blues/rock
band with my old Junior High school music teacher Dan Doiron. It was around this time that I purchased
the kit that I still use today, a 6 piece (57 chevy green as I like to call it) Tama Granstar Kit.
Dan had a small studio and we wrote a few originals and entered a local contest called the "Q-104 Homegrown"
contest. We made the finals
and played the 1991 "Concert on the Hill" in Halifax. We didn't win the Contest but it didn't matter
'cause we were a small-town band playing the largest concert in Halifax that year.
Later that year I met up with the band that would bring me to the city. Fatal Attraction was looking
for a drummer and they got my name from a tech involved with the Homegrown Concert. This was where
I belonged. I would continue playing with Tony Nader and Andy Jeffery for the next 10 years of my life.
The name of the band would change several times as did the singer but Tony, Andy and myself would stick
together through it all.
When we formed Knucklebones we had to take drastic measures. At the time, good singers were hard to
come by. We decided we should use me as the frontman. I was more than a little nervous about the
whole idea of being out front but I learned to deal with it very quickly. We won a few contests,
released a CD and Video in 1996, and became one of the more popular heavy bands in Halifax. But it wasn't to be.
Half way through recording our second CD we decided to call it quits.
Andy and I continued writing a few tunes together but nothing really came of it. He moved away and
for the first time since I started playing the drums I had no one to play with.
Sometime in 1999 Tony called me and informed me that he had got together with a gal named Nadira and
wanted me to join. Nadira and Tony played together before I even came on the scene in '91. They wanted me to join. Needless to say I
did and we just released out second CD called "Awakening" .
I'va also been playing in a cover band around town called Frayed Knot. We do your typical classic rock show
with some current rock stuff thrown in to make us happy. You can usually find us playing at the Copper Penny
about once every 6 to 8 weeks.
