These days I mostly do other stuff, but I was a musician for many years. I played a variety of styles (rock, funk, jazz, and fusion to name a few) in a number of bands and even played full-time professionally for a while. Below are some old recordings from the archives. The recording quality isn’t that great for most tunes, but I salvaged what I could.

Tidal Wave

Tidal Wave was a short-lived band from Orlando, Florida made up of four guys fresh out of Berklee College of Music (Ken Mirrione on guitar, Tom Fiorini on bass, Kays Al-Atrakchi on keyboards, and me on drums) along with Rob Thomas (later of Matchbox Twenty) on vocals. We were mostly a surf band for some reason, but we played a few other styles as well. The tunes here are three old covers plus an original from a live show.

The shifting between multiple styles (reggae, rock, Latin, and jazz) in our version of “Wild Thing” was probably the result of some Berklee influence. “Wipe Out” was, of course, solos for everybody.

That last song, “Layin’ Down the Law,” was some islandy-sounding original. I’m not sure, but I seem to recall that either Rob or Kays or both came up with the main keyboard riff during a rehearsal and then Tom and I basically used it as an excuse to goof around with baião and songo styles. It was pretty sloppy — we probably only rehearsed it once or twice before playing it live and were still improvising and making it up as we went along.

All Things Are

All Things Are was an alternative rock band from Orlando, Florida with many influences including Nine Inch Nails and Depeche Mode. The sound got progressively more industrial over the lifespan of the band, but it was probably more experimental than anything else.

The first group of tunes is from a very cheap, early demo. It features Rich Schooping on vocals, Kays Al-Atrakchi on keyboards, Rick Knapp on guitar, Billy Coen on bass, and me on drums.

The second group of tunes is from a later phase of the band (without a bass player) and consists of some poor-quality recordings from rehearsals. Those later tunes were still early in the songwriting process. We were still experimenting, improvising, and working out our parts, so everything was very rough. I don’t think we ever got around to recording any of the later, more polished versions.

Groove Or Die

Groove Or Die was another alternative rock band from Orlando, Florida. It was somewhat of a precursor of All Things Are in that it had the same keyboard player, guitar player and drummer (Kays, Rick, and me), but with Shay Crockett on vocals and Clay Watson on bass. The songs here are from a studio demo. There are also some videos from Groove Or Die live shows.

The Healers

The Healers were yet another alternative band from Orlando, Florida. I’m not sure what the best description of the band would be. It was kind of a melodic, hippy, alternative sound. Except “Old Man”; that’s punk. I just filled in on drums for a couple of gigs. Those shows weren’t recorded, but I did record the one and only rehearsal I did with them. I was still learning their songs at the rehearsal and doing a lot of improvising.

(The songs marked with an asterisk are ones whose names I couldn’t remember so I just guessed.)

Miscellaneous

These first two tunes are a couple of early recordings of a fusion jam session from my Berklee college days. It’s just me and a guitar player goofing around while waiting for everyone else to show up (for a cover band rehearsal). As I recall, these were his tunes and I was sight-reading whatever music he had written out, so there was a lot of improvising going on.

The second two tunes are rock songs from a studio session I did for a Cincinnati songwriter/guitarist.