My half brother plays keyboards and most of my cousins play instruments and sing, You get the idea… I come from a musical lineage.

 

I grew up on Lake Ontario just north of Buffalo, New York. During high school, I was fortunate to be accepted by the Buffalo music scene. Some of the greatest musicians come from Buffalo and they were very gracious in letting me “pay my dues” as a young drummer. This was in the late ’80s and I was playing with musicians that worked with Rick James, Spyro Gyra, Paul Williams, Goo Goo Dolls, Steve Miller Band, and Ani DiFranco. I was 17.

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I attended Villa Maria College in Buffalo and loved the music program led by Jim Kurzdorfer, bass player with Spyro Gyra. What a thrill to study music with a guy whose name I knew from the credits on the back of my favorite albums and been listening to for years.

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At 19, I moved to Southwest Florida for the first time and performed with a young emerging country rock band called Thorobred. This band was signed to a record deal and had some great musicians in it. One of whom was Phil O’Donnell. Years later, Phil became known as “Philbilly” as one of the biggest songwriters in Nashville. I loved Fort Myers and made some great lifelong friends. However, I was disillusioned by the “record deal” and the amount of time it was taking to start a tour, so I moved to Orlando and joined a touring Top 40 dance band called Gibralter. In those days, a band could perform three weeks at a time in one club. We traveled from city to city across the US and made a pretty good living. Since I never finished college at Villa Maria, I credit my time with Gibralter as my continued education. Drumming 4 hours a night, 6 nights a week, 48 weeks a year for 3 years helped me get one-third of the way on the 10,000 hours rule!

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After Gibralter, I moved to Nashville, Tennessee. I was 22 years old and full of energy and excitement. I quickly started playing around town and meeting prominent people in the music industry. I played with The Warren Brothers, who have written some of the biggest songs in Country Music, and jammed with The Wooten Brothers (The Flecktones), and started touring with Barry Fish from the TV show Star Search. I spent 3 years working with Barry and again, I consider it my continued education because I really cut my teeth in the studio with Barry. The Barry Fish Band took up residency in Tallahassee, Florida as the house band for The Moon, a popular dance hall and we also became the session musicians for Blue Moon recording studios. Blue Moon was previously called Pegasus Studios and was built by Butch Trucks, the drummer from The Allman Brothers Band and the uncle of popular guitarist Derek Trucks. I had my own room (studio C) at Blue Moon and I really dove into writing music and recording techniques. I wrote jazz, lounge music, techno, house, royalty free music libraries, anything, and everything. I feel very fortunate for having the opportunity to spend endless hours in that studio.

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At 24, I was asked to take over the drumming chair for The Forester Sisters. These wonderfully talented ladies had been on top of the charts for over 10 years. They had 15 top 10 hits and five of those went to number one! I had such a great time touring with them. We performed tons of shows and were on several Country Music TV shows. I finally got to perform on the Grand O’l Opry like my mother, brother and sister had done previously. With the Forester’s, I performed in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland headlined in Las Vegas and played countless shows with many legends in country music like Jerry Reed, BJ Thomas, Ricky Skaggs, Oak Ridge Boys, The Bellamy Brothers and more.

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I was with The Forester Sisters for a year when I decided to settle down in Southwest Florida for the second time! I was 25 and I already knew several musicians in Fort Myers. It didn’t take long to start working with local artists and bands and recording in most of the local studios. I was starting to dig my roots into Southwest Florida for real. At 28, I started a multimedia company called definition MEDIA. As a sole proprietor, I designed websites for local business owners and became the art director for The Senior Living Guide Magazine. I had always been a fine artist with a design eye, but never had a break from drumming and touring to pursue the field. Over the next four years, definition MEDIA did well and I was ready to go to the next level. I bought a home and added a soundproof room that became a small recording studio of my own. Over the next 15 years, I produced and engineered 29 albums in that small studio. Ten years ago I started learning about video production, directing and editing.

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I have been at my current studio location for almost 9 years now. The company name has been shortened to defMEDIA Group to convey my many creative divisions: audio recording studio, video production services, print design services, online drum tracks, acoustic drum sample library, and a songwriter performance-based video podcast called Music Studio Live. I co-host the podcast with a very talented singer/songwriter, Sarah Hadeka. Together we perform a couple of songs live in my studio that was written by our featured artist Then we sit down and have a conversation with that artist about songwriting, music, and life. We have 10 episodes on YouTube for season one and COVID-19 stalled our production of  season two. We remain hopeful to bring the podcast back!