I'm the youngest of six kids from an Irish Catholic family. We lived in an old farmhouse in a
suburb of Cincinnati at 4400 Jessup Road. I grew up listening to 8-tracks of Cat Stevens, the
Beatles, 70's rock albums thanks to my brother, and Bruce Springstein, thanks to my sister. I
started playing guitar on an ancient Kent classical guitar that had only two strings on it. I saw a
guy teach someone a chord in a movie and tried it myself and discovered the two-string power
chord. My brother, who is 10 years older than me, and a very good musician, noticed what I
was doing and bought me a "dime store" guitar/amp combo for Christmas when I was
16. I started playing whatever I was into at the time, like Zeplin, U2, the Beatles, etc. When I
went to college, two friends asked me to play bass with them in a blues band. I had never
played bass, but gave it a shot. The guitarist had a punk background and we ended up being
a funk and thrash trio called Gourdo. My love for playing music grew to the point where that's
what I wanted to do when I got out of college. That band really died when we graduated but
I held onto it, or to the idea of it, for two more years. I started writing my own music and
tried to sing a bit as well. I played bass for a year in a Sabbath-meets-Love & Rockets hard
rock band. I started to take my spirituality more seriously during this time and started
following Jesus. I left the hard rock band as my life and interests were changing. I joined a
group of believers called Vineyard Central where worship, community, service, and simplicity
were practiced sincerely in an effort to emulate Jesus and the eternal kind of life he talked
about. I led worship there for a year or so and eventually started writing songs again. I have
a lot of influences including Jeff Buckley, Led Zeplin, Radiohead, Pearl Jam, the Verve,
David Gray, and U2. Recently I've really enjoyed CDs by Gillian Welch, Sufjan Stevens, Coldplay, Explosions in the Sky,
Damien Rice, Over the Rhine, Rufus Wainwright, Cameron Martin Cochran, and
The Times. I love classical, some blues, folk, bluegrass, indiginous international music,
swing, ambient, jazz, especially older John Coltrane and Miles Davis type stuff, as well as
celtic, especially Seamus Egan. My music and lyrics come from the ironies, struggles, graces,
and mysteries of life and I hope to engender a sense of solidarity among fellow pilgrims on this journey.