"Bobby:" I started guitar lessons with "Charles" in St. Louis, MO when I was 7. Charles would spend most of the lesson showing me photos of the hot rod shows he attended, and couln't grasp my foreign name, calling me "Bobby." After about a year of this, I was switched to a classical taskmaster from the Segovia school, who scolded me on the "hot rod" technique I had developed and made me start over at age 9.Classical shmassical: I wanted to be Ted Nugent. Later on I found myself betraying the "disco sucks" crowd and loving Rufus, Stevie Wonder, EW&F, Chic... And this morphed into an affair with jazz and fusion.Berkeley: My interests were varied, so in a roundabout way, I majored in Latin American Studies, which led me to live and study in Brazil in 1984/1985. (Yay Brazil!) Anyway, I graduated from the "real" Berkeley, CA. After graduation, I started playing with various funk, African and Caribbean bands in the San Francisco Bay Area.Acoustics: In 1994, I decided to change course and study architectural acoustics at the University of Florida. While in Gainesville, I started the funk band What It Is. We became quite popular in the Southeast, but eventually the band packed up and moved to California. We released two records, When Groove Was King and Soul Pop, both of which I think are great.Sco: Generous musical associates recommended me to John Scofield. Playing with John was the seminal musical event in my life. We traveled the world, made two happening records, and I got to knowa super fantastic person and guitar idol of mine.NYC: These days I live and gig in NY, where I have a few dandy endeavors going on: Cornpone (an "afro-country" four-piece with Andy Hess of Gov't Mule, Tony Mason on drums and Daniel Mintseris on keys) Shitty Shitty Jam Band(with Jesse Murphy, Aaron Johnston (1/2 of the fab group Brazilian Girls), Shawn Pelton from SNL), Lemon, Michael Leonhart, Jihae and Betty Black.Duality: In my other life, I'm an acoustical consultant with Shen Milsom & Wilke and acousticdesignunit.com. I usually work with architects in the design of buildings in which sound is an important consideration. Anyway, thanks for checking all this out. Feel free to e-mail me at here or at [email protected].
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