I was born in the cradle of funk: Dayton, Ohio.  My childhood aspirations were in music, but as a DJ not a musician.  My musical taste was formed by two great radio stations in Dayton:  WTUE (our local rock station) and WDAO (the nation’s first FM R&B station).  I attended Fairview High School and took Radio/Television classes at Roth High School through the D.P.S. Magnet Program.  I continued down that path into college at Bowling Green State University.  I was ready to pay my dues to be a DJ until I found out how much (or rather, how little) they made.  I moved to Florida in 1982 after becoming bored with college.  My uncle had offered me an electrician’s job in Lake Worth that paid well for a college drop-out.  My percussion career, however, started by accident.

Seven years and 3 jobs later, I was recording demo tapes for my musician friends in my apartment.  Matthew Craig was a friend I had met at Dirty Moe's Oyster Boat in Boca Raton, Florida.  He and his brother Frank lived in Lighthouse Point and they had their own band.  Matthew was writing his own solo material and I was recording it for him.  One day he brought by a pair of bongos for me to play behind a new song he had written.  Matthew was stretching his arranging ability, but was having trouble keeping time with his new chord progressions and patterns (or so he told me).

After the recording session, Matthew asked me to join him at a live gig and play along with the new song.  I was a fan and would have gone anyway, but to be a part of the show, now that sounded fun.  One gig turned to two, and then Matthew discovered I could sing a harmony, so we became a duo.  We played coffee houses, book stores, and Irish pubs.  Frank and Matt invited me to play in their pool-side band in 1989 and we were the afternoon house band at Summers on the Beach for 2 years.  Matthew and I landed a steady duo gig at the Acapulco Grill in Boca and I became an oddity as a blonde haired bongo player in a sea of Latin percussionists.

After a wee bit of local fame, I began to play with different guitarists and started learning different styles of music.  Matt and Frank both moved out of town and I joined an 8 piece R&B band with local musician Jerry “Screamin’” Leaman.  That band (Junior Smothers and Some Other Brothers) was a blast.  Great players, great harmonies and fun songs.

Junior Smothers helped me to stretch my abilities a bit farther.  We played shows at Boston’s on the Beach, Clamster’s and Guido O’Malley’s.  On the weekends, I was playing gigs with Pete Harris at The Acapulco Grill and his own place: Bimini Bob’s.  Pete’s gigs were very laid back.  Lots of Jimmy Buffett, Eagles, Poco and CSN styled stuff.  It was quite a change from the classic soul and R&B of the Junior Smothers band.  While I was playing with Pete, I got to open for Bob Dylan at the West Palm Beach Heritage Festival.  Ask me about it sometime…

After years of playing Mustang Sally and Margaritaville, I was ready to do something new.  A few years back, I had seen a great band at The Mallet and become an instant fan of The Groove Thangs.  They had broken up, but my friends and I really liked their style.  They were a high energy funky-roots-swamp-soul thing (trust me, that’s the best I can do to describe them).  Front man Down Pat had moved out of town while Saxman Jeff Watkins had been picked up by some guy named James Brown (yes, THAT James Brown).  Bonefish and Kilmo were playing as “The Shack Daddys” but were busy getting Alligator Alley (the first version) off the ground.  The Groove Thangs did an occasional reunion show, but that wasn’t often enough for me.  The local bar scene was loaded with basic blues bands.  It got to a point where I was tired of going out to the local bars and hearing the same 30 blues standards in every joint. That soulful brand of ultra-groovy music was missing from the South Florida music scene and I wanted someone to revive it.  I never thought I'd be one of the guys to help lead the charge.

I had been laying low from the music and just doing the day-job thing for a while, when I got a call from and old friend and sometimes musical partner Chuck Farthing.  Chuck and I had done some acoustic duo and trio work together in my formative years, and we had both taken a break from the scene.  We were on-and-off players who knew to keep a day job.  We’d play for 6 months at a time, and then take a break for a few months.   We were both getting the itch to start playing out again, and decided that this time, we were going to build a better mousetrap.

I had been around the communications biz for a few years and just opened my own wireless repair company in Deerfield Beach.  Chuck’s company happened to be less than two miles away.  We met for lunch at Backyard Burger off of 10^th and Military Trail and devised our plan to start a musical (r)evolution in South Florida.  We were going to build the best band, and we were only going to play the best music.  To insure that plan, we made a set of rules that the band and its members must obey at all costs.

1. No “Mustang Sally” – EVER.
2. Any song brought into the band had to be a song we’d never heard another local band play.
3. No Frat Rock. (Louie, Louie, Hang on Sloopy, and the standards.)
4. No “Joe Dirt” Rock. (Skynyrd, Thorogood, Georgia Satellites, etc…)
5. Play for fun; take their money anyway…

Admittedly, I’ve omitted several parts of my life (my introduction to the Carney world through my time with the circus, my work in professional wrestling, my year traveling the country as a grifter), but you probably wouldn’t believe half of those stories, anyway.  All in all, I’ve had a great life and after tons of club dates, a handful of corporate shows, a few weddings and two appearances at Sunfest, I’m proud to be a member of that well oiled boogie machine that your friends talk about in their sleep.