After high school I went on the road for a few years with a rock band. I returned to school (College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA) and got a degree in education, went back a few years later and got a masters degree. I've been teaching school and writing, recording and playing music on weekends and in the summers. I have dabbled in just about every genre of music, but I decided that most of the music I had been playing was not challenging or musically where I wanted to be, so I created my own genre of music: Ambient-Metal.
Elliott Randall (guitarist for Steely Dan, Doobie Brothers; studio guitarist extraordinaire, solo artist) wrote that Ambient-Metal is "absolutely beautiful"; a compliment that was unsolicited albeit greatly appreciated considering that his playing is one of my early influences as I developed as a guitarist.
"Ambient Metal" sounds like the love child of Randy Rhoads and Enya all grown up and traveling the world, soaking up the influences of different musical genres and cultures and in a perpetual state of flux: Melodic at hyperspeeds and slow bluesy bends, intense and yet tranquil, relaxing one minute and raging the next. It is without drums (for now) and moves at the speed of emotion; it is a deliberate oxymoron, it is fire and water, and a combination of heaven and hell that touches all of those that inhabit that halfway point between the two, it is the tonal expression of being human when words are not enough . . . the essence of my humanity.
My newest song, "Journey to Palestine / Renaissance" is melange of the sounds of the Middle East with the Ambient-Metal concept. Since Palestine is sacred to three of the world's main religions, the ending of the song is a sonic metaphor for a spiritual rebirth or "Renaissance" of the individual making the journey. While writing, I envisioned this as the soundtrack for an epic film about Palestine.
The song "Chasing the Santa Anna Winds / Firestorm" is my musical impression of the fires that have ravaged Southern California. The Santa Anna winds start out innocuous enough (like the song) and end in a menacing march through the hills of Southern California (hopefully conveyed to the listener via the menacing guitar riffs and the layered orchestration).
"Casa Grande" is kind of a commune with the past: The peaceful existance of the Native American people in the Arizona desert around the tribal community center centuries before Europeans even knew about the American continents.
While I'm almost forced to catagorize my music, I hate to put myself into a box of expectations. Rock, metal, blues, fusion, jazz and acoustic: I would like to be all of these and none of these. I feel that music expresses a range of human emotions that are not limited by catagories.
In the future, expect any additional music to be rock, metal, blues, fusion, jazz, acoustic & so much more: Expect the unexpected.
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