My music career started when I was 12 years old. First day of school the music teacher came into my homeroom and asked if anyone wanted to play drums. Two weeks later I did my first gig at Richard M. Dixon's Comedy Store, opening for the then unknown Eddie Murphy.

My first record was Stevie Wonder's "Hotter than July". It changed my life.

The biggest musical influence in my life has been blues and R&B artists. Artists such as Otis Clay, Bobby Bland, Muddy Waters influenced the way I sang, while blues pianists like Meade Lux Lewis, Pete Johnson and Ray Charles taught me piano. I slowly gravitated towards musicians like Charlie Parker and Oscar Peterson, but everything I've always done has its root in the blues.

The Lizards offers me an outlet to express those blues roots. To me music is a language… some languages I understand and appreciate… Jazz, Rock, Country, Soul… but Blues is the language I most love to speak!