About

My journey with music started around age five when I was fortunately pushed into piano lessons by my mother. As that early connection of notes on sheet music to melodies sounding on a piano was taking shape, my older brother, Greg (nine years my elder), was finding The Beatles, Zeppelin, and The Police, among others…and was a drummer to boot. I played a few other instruments before a fateful day when I was asked to play drums on a moment’s notice in grade school band by director Jim Culbertson, and the rest is history. Within a few years I was gigging with various rock/pop/punk bands, leading the school drum line, earned a scholarship to a summer program at Berklee, studied privately under Brian Justison at Millikin, music was my home, but as I approached college, I decided to pursue something outside of my comfort zone, and made the move to Champaign-Urbana to study business at the University of Illinois.

I kept at school, got a degree, worked at an investment firm and bank, but always kept my chops up and was learning about recording and producing my bands in any free time. I was playing drums in The Dirty Feathers, and had recently joined Elsinore, when Mark Rubel tapped me to run his legendary Pogo Studio because he was making the move to start the Blackbird Academy in Nashville… it was an opportunity of a lifetime for me, for which I’m forever grateful, but immediately began my trial by fire of working a legit studio with real clients. Needless to say, I loved every minute of it, and haven’t stopped making records since.

With Pogo leaving town, I was back to being a free agent and decided to kick up Wave Upon Wave, my production company I’d established years prior, and was also getting to know Matt Talbott, singer/guitarist of Hum and owner of Earth Analog studio… it was a natural fit for me to start taking my clients and sessions to the amazing studio he built, and to keep building off the momentum I’d started under Mark.

While all this was going on, I was able to find time to hone my skills as a drum teacher and as a videographer…two skills that have kept me on my toes, while fitting nicely into my routine as a music producer and audio engineer.

Currently, I reside near downtown Champaign with my wife, Amber, our cat, Lux, and two mini dachshunds, Mabel and Maude. I teach drums and music production at Next Generation School and from my home studio. I typically spend my days mixing and mastering projects while taking on a handful of records a year to produce and keeping a full engineering schedule. Thanks for taking the time to read this… wanna make a record or video?