A Few Things You Should Know About Me

Just to give you a little background about me and how I've come to know music...

I don't come from a musical background or musical family. Neither of my parents are musically inclined and no one from my extended family sings or plays anything outside of singing hymns in church and occasionally whistling along to the radio. Speaking of the radio, I didn't grow up listening to it like most kids. It just wasn't on at our house. I never had a cassette player or a Walkman. Didn't get a shelf system until I was a senior in high school.

I couldn't tell you who any of the artists on the radio were until late in my 7th grade school year. If the radio was ever playing, it was purely background music while we drove from one place to the next. 

In 7th grade, several of my friends were into some of the artists getting radio play and after a while I started to feel left out. I asked one of my buddies who I should check out and he mentioned one of his then favorite groups, Creed. Short story even shorter, the first album I ever bought was Human Clay. Soon thereafter I asked my father who some of the bands he enjoyed were and within the year I could tell you any artist or song that got airplay on the local classic rock station. 

So that's how it started.

I should mention that I met that friend in band the year before where by sheer happenstance, I joined up and by the peach fuzz of my upper lip, ended up playing drums instead of flute. 

Since then I've played numerous collegiate and professional ensembles, played a half-time show at the 2009 BCS National Championship, earned a Bachelor's in Music Education, and I'm almost done with my Master's in the same field. Oh, and I've accumulated just under 22,000 songs according to my iTunes library.