Charles

I am a music producer in NYC I play keyboards and other various instruments and sing and write music and stuff. I have been working with Zach Macko and Far North. Over the past few years we have become great friends. I was playing keyboards with those Far North boys in the early days, but health issues have prevented me from continuing with the group live. I think of myself as that guy in the movie who gets carried off the field on a stretcher and has to root for the team from some hospital bed while listening to the play by play on a transistor radio.Over the years I have played in many bands. Mostly as a singer. About 10 years ago I started to shift to producing records. I met Zach in 2001 and we have been working together since the very beginning. I am a big Zach fan and I am proud to have had a part in the production of the music.Over the past 25 years, I have written and recorded records with many different bands. Although some of the bands that I played in had moderate success, I never came close to getting a record deal. I have made many records over the 25 years that will not see the light of day. Through out my life it has always been a great balancing act to remain active in music while working full time to earn a living. I vowed that I would never quit… I would be the guy in the old folks home putting a rock band together.In 2002 I started to become very sick. I will skip all the gory details, just sum it up to say, I had to drastically change the way I was living my life, but I wasn’t ready to do that yet… so for the next few years I kept trying to juggle music, work, life, health… Then one day I just had to face the fact that I could not do it all anymore..I played my first live show when I was 17. I have always loved performing and I miss that part of my life very much.Sometime around 1990 I started to write music that didn’t fit in the band that I was playing in at the time. Prior to that I had always written music with a band. During the past 17 years, aside from music I have written with other musicians, I have written over 100 songs that even though I have my own studio, I have not yet recorded. I was always working on something that was going to be “huge” so someday I would get to record my songs…It is harder now than ever before to stay committed. Some days my health puts me in a place where pain is overwhelming and life’s simplest things are just too much for me to think about. Still during this dark time in my life, amazing things have happened. I met my wife (The most awesome woman on the planet!), I have made some wonderful music with Zach and friends.. and I have adopted 3 of the coolest cats. I am learning to live with my conditions and I am determined to give something back to the world that has given so much to me.On my worst days and really on my best days too, music has been there for me. To look back on every moment in my life of significance, I can hear the song that was playing at that moment. Crab fishing on Long Beach Island with Van Halen playing in the background. Skipping school listening to the Doobie Brothers. Working through my first broken heart with Phil Collins (Is that cliché?) Discovering new parts of my self on a dark dance floor while Nirvana played violently awakening my own sleeping soul… Snap shots really I owe so much to this wonderful music.I made a promise to myself that I would start to record all these songs I had written and put them out there. At first I thought, just so I could just get it out of my head, but as I have walked through the fire many times, and been saved by music, I have come to realize that while it may only be a song, music is what I have to give back to the world.