I was born in Northridge, CA on September 2nd 1970. My family lived in southern CA until 1982 when we moved to Salt Lake City, UT. I started playing guitar at the age of 14. The year was 1984. I had posters of Van Halen, Kiss and Ozzy Osbourne all over my walls. After jumping around in front of the mirror with my guitar for a couple of weeks, I finally got around to learning how to play. I progressed quickly and was on stage in local bands after a year and a half. I started hanging around a store called Guitar City all the time. This is where my parents had bought my first guitar. The staff there was kind to me and taught me about amplifiers, effects processors and such. I bought a ton of gear there over there years.
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After my high school graduation in 1988 I went to G.I.T in Hollywood, CA. I only stayed for a short time however, as at that time the other students seemed more interested in what they were wearing then what they were playing. Hardly any of them could play worth a crap, but they already had the rock star attitude. So I took off. I moved back home and started practicing harder then ever and really started working on my song writing. Around 1990 I really started getting in to recording and I started writing and producing radio jingles for a few local radio stations. I also recorded my first CD at my friend's 16-track studio.
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In 1992 I got a job as the floor manager in a music store called Guitar City. I made a lot of great friends there including two other employees named Sean Halley and Scott Wood. Both of them eventually moved to Los Angeles and currently work for Digidesign. I also bought a ton of gear! I learned a lot during those six years. I attended every training session that I could. I read product manuals for all kinds of sound and recording products. Once I had a strong grasp on how P.A. systems really worked I started hooking up Bi-amped and Tri-amped P.A. systems in the store and experimenting with different compressors, Eqs, microphones, etc. Once I got pretty good at it I started doing a lot of live sound engineering for bands that my friends were in. From there on out I couldn't go to a club to see my friends play with out being dragged to the mixing console to help improve the sound.
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My home recording studio went from a 4-track to an 8-track and then to a 16-track reel-to-reel machine. At that point my friend Mike Murphy (also a Guitar City employee) and I opened a small studio called After Hours Recording, where we recorded local artists. Then Sean Halley and I opened a much bigger 24-track ADAT studio and I finally took some time off from recording all of my friends and recorded my own CD. I had all of my friends play on it with me. I also hired some studio musicians to help with piano, pedal steel and saxophone. Once the CD was done it was late 1997 and I pulled together some of my friends that had worked on the CD with me to form a band and play the material live.
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We managed to get in one gig before I moved to Tempe, AZ to attend The Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences in February of 1998. I had decided that I really wanted to be a professional recording engineer. That was one of the high points of my life. I already had a lot of experience so I was able to advance quickly and do very well. I had more in common with my teachers then I did with the other students. I graduated at the top of my class and moved to Los Angeles for my internship.
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My friend Scott Wood had moved to Los Angeles a few years earlier to work for Digidesign and he kindly allowed me to move in with him for a while. Soon after that Scott left Digidesign to design the first Pro Tools based post production facility in Hollywood. It was called New Standard Post. He had me hired as well and I helped design the signal flow for the facility. I did most of the ADR control room myself and did all of the wiring in the Pro Tools editing suites. Scott taught me a ton about post production, synchronization, 5.1 mixing and more. If it weren't for Scott's kindness and tutelage, I wouldn't be were I am today. When the facility was opened, I started working as the ADR recordist. I met a bunch of movie stars and managed to get credits in five films. I also met my wife Lisa at this time.
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New Standard Post was a miracle of modern technology. Everything worked even better then we had hoped. Soon all of the big studios like FOX and Sony were coming by for tours to see what we had created. Within 5 years all the studios had followed our lead. NSP was a great experience for me, but in 1999 I met Karl Moet from TASCAM while I was at the AES show in New York. 30 days later I was working for TASCAM as a Product Specialist and Scott was back at Digidesign with a huge promotion.
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In 2000 Sean Halley moved to Los Angeles and I soon got him a job working with me at TASCAM. We both traveled around the country conducting clinics, working at trade shows and training store employees. Soon we both became assistant product managers and really started influencing the feature sets of TASCAM products. I was responsible for most of the software features of the DM-24 digital mixer. Many features that we couldn't get in to that product made it in to the current DM-3200 and DM-4800 digital mixer. I had a lot of influence on the MX-2424 and it's software application MX-View. I also did a lot of work on the Pocket Studio 5. In 2001 my wife Lisa and I were married.
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Around 2003 I went on to be a Product Manager for Line 6 and Sean scored a great gig with Digidesign. I started at Line 6 because they wanted to start making recording products for guitar players. As it turned out they weren't quite ready to get started with those projects at the time, so I helped finish up the Vetta II amplifier and also helped develop the Workbench hardware and software which allows users to edit the Variax guitar with a computer via USB.
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My previous supervisor at TASCAM, John Bastianelli, became the Head of Product Development for M-Audio and he hired me as a Product Manager in 2003. I developed many products for M-Audio including the Fast Track, Fast Track Pro, Firewire Solo, The Black Box, Jamlab, ProjectMix I/O, MicroTrack 24/96 and the Pro Fire Light Bridge.
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In March of 2006 I began working for Key Code Media who sells professional audio and video equipment to the post production market. It was fun to be back in the Pro Tools/Post Production environment. I was selling large Digidesign Icon consoles and Pro Tools HD systems.
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Later that year my old friend Mike Murphy Decided that he wanted to open his own guitar store and called me for advice. I did my best to help him with his endeavor. I invited him out to the NAMM show and introduced him to everyone that I thought he should be dealing with. Mike opened Murphy's Guitars earlier this year. I flew up to Utah to help with his Grand Opening. Somewhere in the midst of helping Mike with his business plan, it occurred to me that I could open my own guitar store in California. While Mike's store was based on acoustic guitars and the education market, my idea was completely different. And thus I quit my job with Key Code Media and put all of my time and money in to opening up The Axe Shop.