What to say? I guess I'll start at the very beginning....
I started playing guitar when I was ten years old. Back then,
heavy metal was the thing and that new "alternative" music was
just on the rise. Growing up in a small mountain town in New
Mexico, my friends and I all tried to play as fast as we could,
memorizing and mastering long, complicated guitar solos to try
to show each other up (in the friendliest of competitions, mind
you).
After a while, the speed-demon school of guitar started to seem
kind of soul-less to me. When the things I was playing all started
to hold my interest about as much as a math test, I knew
something needed to change. So I un-learned years of training
and spent long hours trying to come up with a style more...
"me." Oh, the singing was still a couple years to come.
I began to idolize idiosyncratic guitarists like Ani DiFranco, Dave
Matthews, and the guys from Korn. They seemed to be more
about expanding the limits of what a guitar (and a guitarist)
could do and, somewhere in there, had discovered their own
voices. I began to admire the completeness and self-reliance of
the acoustic guitar. It seemed an existential instrument to me; if
you make a mistake, there's no band to fall back on. You make
a choice, live with your mistake, and go with it.
I stopped listening to a lot of guitar music, looking for other
sources of instrumentation for inspiration, and discovered the
likes of Fiona Apple, Tori Amos, and Björk and my in-car vocal
training began. I was very lucky to be able to follow along
(somewhat) with such mistresses at the helm. It was at around
this time I discovered Jeff Buckley. I was in love. And my voice
became an instrument all its own.
My style is simple: I try to be the whole band all by myself. I can
play most instruments (my studio recordings are full of them)
but my everyday arrangements are just me and my 7-string,
trying to sound like 5 people. And that, I think is what I sound
like. My style is forged out of the notes and rhythms I pick to
convey the most important parts of songs I love.
I started playing guitar when I was ten years old. Back then,
heavy metal was the thing and that new "alternative" music was
just on the rise. Growing up in a small mountain town in New
Mexico, my friends and I all tried to play as fast as we could,
memorizing and mastering long, complicated guitar solos to try
to show each other up (in the friendliest of competitions, mind
you).
After a while, the speed-demon school of guitar started to seem
kind of soul-less to me. When the things I was playing all started
to hold my interest about as much as a math test, I knew
something needed to change. So I un-learned years of training
and spent long hours trying to come up with a style more...
"me." Oh, the singing was still a couple years to come.
I began to idolize idiosyncratic guitarists like Ani DiFranco, Dave
Matthews, and the guys from Korn. They seemed to be more
about expanding the limits of what a guitar (and a guitarist)
could do and, somewhere in there, had discovered their own
voices. I began to admire the completeness and self-reliance of
the acoustic guitar. It seemed an existential instrument to me; if
you make a mistake, there's no band to fall back on. You make
a choice, live with your mistake, and go with it.
I stopped listening to a lot of guitar music, looking for other
sources of instrumentation for inspiration, and discovered the
likes of Fiona Apple, Tori Amos, and Björk and my in-car vocal
training began. I was very lucky to be able to follow along
(somewhat) with such mistresses at the helm. It was at around
this time I discovered Jeff Buckley. I was in love. And my voice
became an instrument all its own.
My style is simple: I try to be the whole band all by myself. I can
play most instruments (my studio recordings are full of them)
but my everyday arrangements are just me and my 7-string,
trying to sound like 5 people. And that, I think is what I sound
like. My style is forged out of the notes and rhythms I pick to
convey the most important parts of songs I love.
