At 8 years old I bought my first album, Glenn Miller Orchestra’s Greatest Hits. Thus my love affair with music had begun.

I spent my childhood listening to my mom’s albums in the dining room. Every day after school I would listen, absorb, & eventually start singing along to Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Van Morrison, Bing Crosby, & The Beatles. My father taught me to love country, funk, & classic rock. I watched my brother painstakingly practice seemingly impossible heavy metal riffs for hours. My sister spent years following the Grateful Dead & handed me a number of bootleg cassettes turning me on to the sounds of the sixties.

At 20, I was a homeless vagabond busking in the streets of San Francisco & spending my nights at the feet of little known guitar god Carlos Guitarlos, a former rock star who had fallen on hard times & was also living on the streets. From him I learned how to play guitar from my heart instead of from my head.

My professional work as a luthier has led me to travel the world as guitar tech & stage manager for number of renowned acts including Death Cab for Cutie, Ben Kweller, Fishbone, Mindless Self Indulgence, & Eskimo Joe. My time on the road made me realize just how large my desire to create & perform my own music was & I began performing in small venues in NJ.

I spent years as a journeyman musician. Getting hired to join existing bands who’d lost a member along the way. Unfortunately for me, I’d never felt that the songs I was writing fit into any of the bands I’d joined & kept most of them to myself. Around 2008, I started going to local blues jams in order to advance my improvisational skills. Getting involved with the NJ blues scene afforded me the opportunity to meet, perform, & befriend some local legends as well as many excellent players you’ve never heard of. From these jams I was lucky enough to meet bassist Ted Palumbo & drummer Bryan Sachs. Together the 3 of us formed a friendship &, in 2016, entered JarShaker Studio in Middletown to record a 7-song EP of introspective tunes I’d been sitting on.

Since then, the band, known as The Dirty Shine, has been performing throughout the tri-state area, building up a loyal fan base & acclaim from local media personalities & promoters. We spent 2017 finishing up the EP while performing a weekly residency at the Blue Moon in South Amboy & winning “Red Bank’s Hottest Band” as decided by the Red Bank Motorcycle Club. 2018 is proving to be a another year of climbing for us. In March we, for the first time in my career, headlined a Saturday night event at the Stone Pony. Currently we are working on recording our 2nd release. A full length LP full of songs with an outward, global glance.