I was lucky to have grown up surrounded by people who love music; even more fortunately they were very eclectic. First of all, there was a fairly substantial if not solid foundation of classical music, layered with rock and R&B layered on top of that. But then, when I was ten I discovered Oscar Petersen and a kind of jazz I hadn;t heard before. My grandmother played piano, but what she played as jazz was more along the line of boogie-woogie and big band standards. Within a few short years my collection had become quite diverse; Santana and Hendrix records played along side Rashaad Roland Kirk, Pharoah Sanders, George Benson, The Talking Heads, King Crimson, and the One Above All, Herbie Hancock. Once I found John Coltrane, Wes Montegomery, and Miles Davis, I ascended. When I got a guitar when I was seventeen, the times I grew up in, and also, where I grew up , determined that the first band I was in was a heavy metal/hard rock/prog sort of thing where our dreams outstripped our nascent abilities. But onward we worked, but as I developed, the more I diverged, so much so that by the time grunge ruled the world, I was more into experimenting with jazz rock/fusion/world music/proggy mess. If you have already listened to any of the music on this site, I still am a mixture of many things. Also, in the opinions of many who have been to my shows over the years, I may still be a mess as well.