About a year later, Mom started me up on violin. I don't really know why, I only know I didn't really ask to learn it. My teacher was Beth Cohen, a really cool Jewish Bohemian gypsy woman. But I mostly studied classical stuff like Mozart and Beethoven. A year later, I started taking lesson at school with Mark Jacobs, who was not only a great teacher but talented song writer. He actually wrote a lot of the songs we'd sing in class.
A year after that, I began piano with Anne Perrault (who is now at the Longy School of Music). She was very intense and had high expectations for me through all our lessons together. The bulk of my music theory knowledge comes directly from her.
I continued to play violin and piano through my teenage years doing dorky things like orchestra and piano recitals. Then in high school, I lost interest in violin and decided to drop it. I continued to play piano though not nearly as much as Miss Perrault wanted me too. But I wanted to play sports and could not dedicate enough time to it.
But in turns out that sports became the impetus for me to start guitar. It was the fall of 1988 that I first discovered Gun n Roses. We listened to it everyday in the locker room during freshman football, courtesy of Mr. Dan McGrath. Slash turns out to be the reason I became a guitarist. Shortly thereafter, my friend Brian Byrne and I started taking guitar lessons at local guitar store in Burlington, MA. I took them off and on for about 2 years before I really started to take off and be able to learn stuff on my own.
In high school, I was in one band that went through many names: the Gluttons, H.I.S. (Harmful If Swallowed), etc. We played heavy rock, with a bit of punk thrown in for fun. The other kids in the band with me were into really cool music like Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, and the Pixies WAY before anybody even knew who they were.
I then went to college where performing music sort of fell to the way side of self-discovery and attainment of knowledge (yeah right). Actually, I tried to startup a bunch of bands but never met people with the same interests. Musicians in New York were all about being different and experimental, and I just wanted to rock. Anyway, it wasn't until I got out to San Francisco that I started getting back into playing. Now I play in a cover band in Boston called Old School. We play mostly at the Burren in Somerville and the Skellig in Waltham.