album art by AMY CUTLER!
BIO I love rap music and Vivaldi. Nina Simone and Biggie Smalls make my world go round. The first record i really, you know, heard, in headphones, was Simon and Garfunkel's "Sound of Silence". I play the violin and have since i was a little kid. Growing up, my home was filled with music. There was a lot of singing, french horn playing, and symphony listening, plus youth orchestras, church choirs and xylophones, I use to listen to the classic rock station in a three up front car with my two best friends, the windows cracked and the Indiana winter creeping in. I was born in Texas.
I love the studio, it could very well be my favorite place, (especially when it's raining). So I do a lot of live sampling and looping in an attempt to bring the studio to the stage. All the live looping is like a sporting event, or keeping the first take of every recording. I could fall off the balance beam. which makes it all so much more exciting.
As a dirty teen I would sneak into a tiny jazz hole in the wall almost every night and watch the band play. My favorite person there was an old upright bass player with a bushy smile. The women who worked there knew I wasn't of age. They served me coffee while I fell in love with jazz and live performance.
I really like to make beats, sample old records, but I often leave the beats up to my favorite drummer, Sam. Joey is the bass player and together we make a live trio. I started playing with them both a couple of years ago while making my first record "Beautiful Sleepyhead and the Laughing Yaks." Even though I made and released a number of cassette tapes and CDs before that, I call "Sleepyhead" the first because all the others were similar to going to college. Very important, very influential to my future, but mostly, they were about learning. This year I released my latest work, "The Symphonies: Dreams Memories & Parties", which consists of 10 songs heavily influenced by classical music and hip hop production.
I'm interested in old or odd instruments, samplers and synthesizers, mallets, and analogue reverb. I collect toy pianos, though I only have three. I'm interested in songs, and word play, and sonatas. I'm curious Most of all, I'm grateful for every day I get to make music.
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