I have so many hours of dreaming logged in at my parents gas station in Chugiak, Alaska. Ring up a customer- dream, stock the shelves-dream, mop the floors- dream, plow the snow-dream... I had spent my whole life in this remote town asking the question "what am i gonna do with myself if i stay here?" so as soon as i had saved enough for a ticket and a guitar I moved to LA.
I needed to find out... my Dutch/Welsh father dropped out of 6th grade to survive the Great Depression by picking cotton for bowls of beans until he lied about his age to serve during the Korean War to support his parents... he was a self made man...he built our gas station with his own hands...he taught me to follow my bliss... my Filipino mother who left her parents to board in another town and walked miles in the rain with a banana leaf for an umbrella to go to school, having sewed her own uniform and cooked her meals on a little fire as a child, beleived in the american dream and made a new life in alaska with greater possibilities for her children...she taught me that wit, intuition, resolve and improvisation can go a long way...the rest is left to fate or luck or the combustion of our individual spark.
with common sense, hard work and manual labor my upbringing at the gas station, pursuing music was a luxury, it was not hard for me to save a lump of change and go to the city...did the Hollywood thing hittin the streets with the demo i made at my friends house...at the time those were the only songs i had written...I mean I had played piano and sang in church since I was yay high but I was going by the seat of my pants, figuring out my sound as I wrote...since Fate Is The Hunter I have been developing my sound under the guidance of Tommy Mottola...I'm in good hands, after all he is " the architect of dreams ".