lessons and luckily the guy who owned the guitar store was a Cub fan and loved talking to my dad about the Cubs. Thank you, Lord, for creating my path to learning to play the guitar.

               I started my first band in 8th grade and I still have the video of us playing our first gig at our school carnival. I am pretty sure we only knew 12 songs consisting of Beatles and Creedance Clearwater Revival songs. Another aspect of my life at this time was my passion for sports. I loved both watching and playing sports. So, both my passions, music and sports took up all my time during my younger yeas. In high school I played baseball, football, and basketball but I found out by my junior year my best sport was football, even though basketball was my favorite. I was blessed again to be able to continue playing football in college and living out my dream of playing football. During those years, I was still in a band. Each band I was in got better and better and what fun we had. I can remember playing a football game in Chicago in the afternoon and having one of the band members come to the game so he could pick me up and get me to the gig that night. Sometimes we would have to drive for over three hours to get to a gig. Thanks to all those guys for doing that, to this day I love them all. The memories are still vivid to be today... again we had so much fun playing.

               After college I got my first real job teaching school. My Grandma was a school teacher and I suppose that drew me to my profession. I was a junior high Physical Education teacher as well as a coach for the football at the high school and basketball and track at the junior high; as they say my real-world job had started. This also became the time in my life that I began getting more serious about my music. The band I was in was the best yet, and I was writing more original music and beginning to record it. My home being in central Illinois, we quickly realized that the better paying music scene was up in Chicago and down in St. Louis. Therefore, that is where our band was going to be. We traveled there every weekend and played at any gig our booking agents could get us. In Chicago we played at every hotel on Michigan Avenue and at every event in the city you could imagine. We had so much fun during these days. As I look back, we would jump in the truck and van and leave right after work on Friday and not get home till early Sunday morning. Arriving as the sun was rising and the birds were chirping and the weekend had closed. During that time, we recorded our two best songs and sent them out to record companies in L.A. We had a few responses but worthwhile enough to get us to move out there.

               As time moved on, life happened, I became a principal at the school where I first started my teaching career. I absolutely loved the position; it was what God had intended for me to be. I have had an amazing career in education, and have been so blessed by the teachers, staff and students I have worked with. Throughout all of these years I have continued to play in bands. It is no secret that I love to play live in front of an audience. There is nothing like it and it doesn't matter what the size of the crowd is. I guess you could say that is my one addiction in life other than peanut M&Ms.

This brings us to today and I am still playing live and recording this new music which I have written over these past few years. I suppose the one thing that I must admit is that I'm a studio junky who loves to create my songs in that amazing atmosphere. On this project I decided to use Carlos Santana's approach and bring in as many amazing musicians as possible to give me the sound that I wanted. It has been such a blessing to work with all the singers and musicians who participated in this project. I hope that you find these songs a rewarding to listen to as I have in creating them.

Well, this is my short biography. My friend Joe tells me I should write a book about my life and career in music and in education. While my path has had its ups and downs just like everyone else in the world, I do have some great stories to tell about my journey. I think I will write that book and call it "So You Want To Be A Rock Star.”