Alright is been quite the journey getting here and we still have so far to go, but we are doing it! Come on by and get some free tacos and sing some karaoke. Good vibes all around. Scroll below for some backstory on our little home studio turned professional.
So I started playing guitar when I was 14 years old and, even though I had technically been in band once when I was around the age of 9 (Alto Sax), that’s when my journey with music really began.
You see, I was in love with this girl, her name was Megan and I would do crazy things around her in the hopes of impressing her in any way I could. Around that same time my older sister got a Yamaha electric guitar and, like so many other beginner guitarists, she quickly became frustrated and let it sit most of the time. I became obsessed with it. I spent all my time just trying to make a decent sound come out of it, just one note!
At the time I was very much into Blink-182, Sum 41, and all the other good commercialized pop-punk bands you can think of from that era. So after plucking my first couple of good notes, I quickly set my mind on learning the song “Dammit” by Blink. It seemed easy enough, at least that’s what I thought.
You see, even though the internet was in full swing by this time, it was the very very early days of YouTube so tutorials weren’t exactly readily available and I didn’t have the patience to figure out how to read tabs. So I began this journey entirely by ear. I struggled for weeks but I was finally able to figure out all the notes in the intro riff out, then the root notes of the chords, then the picking pattern and the strumming pattern. I had done it! But that’s when I decided to try to play along with the song…it turns out that keeping tempo was a whole new challenge that I had to face. And that’s kind of been the story of all these 18 years of music; challenge after challenge, adapt and overcome, practice and learn, rinse and repeat.
Fast forward to a few months later, my parents bought me an acoustic guitar and I was desperately trying to learn how to sing and play at the same time. I had learned most of my basic open chord shapes and I set my mind and fingers on a new challenge. I wanted to learn to play and sing the song “Swing Life Away” by Rise Against because I had heard my now girlfriend, Megan, listening to it and swooning (lol) over the lyrics and melody. I was as determined as a teenage boy could be.
Long story short, I learned to play and sing that song, and my then girlfriend became my wife. She’s the whole reason I developed this deep love and passion for music and I thank god every day for her presence in my life. Drive, determination, a little magic, and teenage hormones are a potent combination!
Check out our TikTok for some good backstory and the progress we’ve made over the years.
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