I started on piano and guitar at age 8. I was a bit of a prodigy on piano. I had this old jazzer who played trumpet and piano teaching me. I was doing boogie boogie left hand within a few months. Of course at age 8 I would rather be out playing baseball in the street with the neighborhood kids but I did like it. Then after about a year of lessons my teacher died
I tried some other teachers after that but they sucked. Freddie was cool. I still dabble on keys but sometimes wonder...Stuck with guitar, picked up banjo for a few years, and after high school dropped out of college to be a rock star on guitar. A few recordings exist from back then:
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You can hear who I was listening to
After 4 "lost years", I went back to college, then ended up in grad school. I wanted to start playing jazz but I had a lot of bad habit ingrained on guitar and wasn't patient enough to start over. So I switched to bass, joined the Caltech Big Band (talk about swimming in the deep end). I was still doing guitar gigs, but turns out I was just one of thousands of good guitarists in LA, whereas a bass player who can read, has decent time, and a car that works can get gigs that actually pay
For the new album I picked up the guitar again for two tracks and banjo for one. I have to thank my now-departed parents for paying for, and driving me to lessons all those years. One reason I force my son to study piano (now going on 6 years). He can hate me now - he'll thank me later...
