I have had a love for music as far back as I can remember...my mother says it's because when she was pregnant with me, she would put a portable radio on her stomach at night and play classical music to stimulate my brain.  I guess it worked, because I have always had a natural aptitude for music.  I joined band as soon as I could, for me the sixth grade, and stayed in band until I graduated high school.  During my freshman year of high school one of my dad's friends asked me if I wanted a bunch of cassette tapes, because he had recently updated his music collection to CD's.  Among the tapes were the likes of Iron Maiden, Megadeth, Metallica, and a band that changed my life forever: PANTERA...after sitting in my room and listening to the tapes over and over again, day after day - I knew that's what I wanted to do with my life...and my life was never the same since.  During high school, I started a rock band called Pendulum with some of my closest friends.  I came from a very small goat ropin' town, so everyone thought that was sooo cool.  We wrote a few songs and recorded a Demo Tape with the owner of Donner Musik, Johnny Chadwick.  It turned out okay, but was recorded live... in a broken down mobile home... so the quality was pretty bad.  After getting some more songs and practice-time under our belts, we decided to start performing shows.  Suprisingly, we played a bunch of shows and even ended up playing in the school talent show...during the rehearsal for it, our base player's amp started smoking and caught on fire, but we kept jamming and some people thought we did it on purpose!!!  We were playing shows and getting an eensie weensie bit of local attention, but I was hungry for more  I needed to get out and experience the music scene.  So I got a job at Donner Musik, where I was a stage hand and was responsible for helping to maintain the Sound and Lighting Equipment.  (My guitar player and also my Best Friend/Lead singer also worked for Donner)  Donner Musik did the Sound and Lighting for numerous Bands, Clubs, Bars, Weddings and Special Events.  It was my first experience with the music scene and my first time seeing live rock bands, and I was HOOKED!!!  I even set up for Un Loco before they went big time(if you know who they are?!)Anyways, after seeing a lot of good rock shows, and receiving demos from a lot of bands, I realized that our trailer tape, just wasnt going to cut it.  So we hooked up with the base player of a band in our area, who also happened to be a producer, and we recorded a four song demo, on pro-tools.  We were very happy with it, but looking back-it was really weak.  But, hey it was the only resource we had at the time, so we didnt really know any better.  Well, high schools over so I get recruited by McLennan Community College in Waco, TX.  I auditioned for the school and they gave me a music scholarship.  Just around that time, the lead guitarist of my band lets us know hes going to Arizona to go to music school.  It really sucked, but there was nothing I could do about it, and I was living in Waco anyway, which is about 1 ½ hours from Lampasas (my hometown).  I decided to look around Waco for a good studio we could record a CD at.  I knew Pendulum would be over soon, and I wanted to record a good CD that we could all keep and have something to remember Pendulum forever by.  So we decided to record at LoneStar Music in Waco.  Its a really cool place.  Its either owned or dedicated to Ted Neugent (if you dont know Ted Neugent is a  really huge hunting fan/rockstar)so it was  half a music and instrument store-half a hunting store- and on the top floor- a recording studio.  The CD turned out pretty good, we recorded 5 songs, and we really had a great time recording.  I was studying music education in college and I had a really great percussion instructor/mentor named Jonathan Kutz.  He was a really amazing drummer, and I always had long talks with him, about the music bizz and things like that.  He was really into rock and roll, and had studied with a lot of really great drummers.  I had always talked with him about my inner conflicts, conflicts most serious musicians face, and that was whether to stay in school and transfer to a university, or to just go for it and hit the rock scene hard!!!  One thing he told me, that Ill never forget, was that if he were my age again, he would just go for it!!!  He said that school was very important and it made him the unbelievable drummer that he was, but the with the quality of musicianship showing up in todays rock, it really didnt matter as much as it used to anyways, this is still a conflict I am having this very day. I was in rock band in college, which was a really great experience.  We did The History of Metal which was a blast!  We played everything from Hendrix to Sepultura to Pantera to Led Zeppelin to Alice in Chains!!! I was in Rock Band for Two Years and I really learned a lot from it.  I was also in Pep Band in college, which was a lot of fun too...we played at all the college basketball games.  I played drumset, and the best thing I remember about Pep Band was playing Black Sabbaths Iron Maiden.....the croud went nuts!!!  (me and the base player also got to make up our own songs, for time-outs during the game, and we used to play Beautiful People, by Marylin Manson, people loved it!!!)  Among the music courses I was in were, sight singing, ear training, percussion ensemble, concert band, private percussion lessons, piano, music theory, and some others I cant remember.  I dabbled a little with a few rock bands in Waco, never really found anything, and I taught private lessons and made a few bucks as well,,,after two years at McLennan I knew I had a tough road ahead.  I had to get out of Waco, that town is crazy and eventually my apartment became a crimescene (another story all together!), so I decided to just up and leave.  I moved to Dallas, Tx, home of my favorite band-PANTERA-for the amazing music scene.  I wanted to go to a place where the music resources were vast and plenty, this was a lot better than taking off to L.A., which I could just see ending in tragedy.  Going back to the "conflict"...I will probably go back to school, sooner or later ( I would really like to have a degree)but who knows.  Right now Im just keeping my options open and Ive been sending my transcript to different schools, and contacting music departments at universities...Ive also been hitting the Dallas music scene hard...going to a lot of shows and meeting a lot of musicians and bands here in Dallas, I guess we'll see where it all takes me...life is a long, hard journey and it could have a really bad, or a really good ending...I guess its all in what you make it...