ABOUT

this is my story and I'm sticking to it

I'm a stage performer, among other things. I've been fortunate to work as an actor-singer in Broadway shows and national tours, including RENT, Once, Hair, Aida, and Wonderland. I've also appeared on TV and in independent films.

As a recording artist and drummer, songs I've written, sung, and played on can be found on records by a few different bands, as well as on my 2015 solo EP.  I love to travel and am now based in Nashville, Tennessee, with my wife Allison, son Edison (3), and two rescued canine companions, Bodhi and Coco.  

Emerging from the Seattle suburbs of the 1990s, you could find me in my early twenties singing and drumming in various bar bands and nightclub residencies. Artifacts of that time include a 1995 record with my original jamband, Salamander. I played drums in an indie-rock power trio (Clementine) with Heather Duby and Reggie Watts, and I was the live drummer for trip-hoppers Strange Voices (Sweet Mother Recordings).

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At 25, I moved away East to focus on singing, enrolling at Berklee in Boston for two semesters. I dropped out and fronted a power-pop band called Miss Fortune. After three years and one indie album, the band went bust before we could secure a record deal.

In December 2001, I moved to New York City to pursue a career on the stage, renting a 6th-floor walk-up in the East Village that I sometimes wish I still had. I had dabbled in acting but never studied it formally. I found some quick newbie success, getting my first big job as a standby for the lead role on a national tour (Elton John and Tim Rice's Aida). Flying back frequently to audition for other jobs, I made my Broadway debut as Roger in RENT right after my stint on tour ended in 2003. It was a short but habit-forming run.

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I did some regional theater in the mid-'00s and returned to the band thing in my 30s, playing drums for Kacie Sheik (my future HAiR tribe-mate) and NYCSmoke, and fronting Kill The Camera. I kept auditioning. I worked in tech support and restaurants, as I had many times before. (I still work in tech as a parallel career -- it beats waiting tables!)

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Then the 2009 Broadway Be-In of HAiR: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical happened. (I got to perform on the Tony Awards that year, broadcast from Radio City Music Hall!) Having cut my teeth in a couple of productions of the "hippie skit," I was hired as a swing and understudy for two of the lead roles, Berger and Woof. (Two years later, I joined and closed out the national tour playing Woof; in the meantime, I understudied at Frank Wildhorn's short-lived Wonderland on Broadway).

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In 2013, after a year of hoping and waiting and a personal pilgrimage to Dublin, I got a dream job touring with the ensemble actor-musician cast of Once, the Musical. For two-and-a-half years and over 800 performances in the US, Canada, and Japan, I played guitar and sang on the sparse set of an Irish pub. I had the distinct honor of playing the lead Guy role (i.e., Glen Hansard in the movie) 40+ times.

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While on the road in 2015, I released a 4-song solo EP called Reverberations.

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As the tour wound down that year, I started thinking seriously about not being a New Yorker anymore. I'd met the lovely Allison in Matthew Corozine's acting class back in 2012, and we stuck together while I was touring. Miraculously, I convinced her to move away with me, and bought a house in East Nashville at the end of 2015. We married in 2019 and have a precocious and wonderful 3-year-old named Edison (Eddy). Allison runs a thriving early childhood music center called Tenn Little Birds, where I occasionally teach. Great success!

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Besides a one-day role on the TV show Nashville in 2017, I didn't do much acting for a few years. Instead, I scratched the performing itch by playing events with the Nashville Yacht Club Band as a singer, percussionist, guitar-strummer, and saxophone soloist. Yes, that is too many things.

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In 2022, coming out of COVID hibernation, I got back on stage for a few weeks at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center as dad-joker Harley Coates in the Nashville premiere of May We All, a new country-music musical co-produced by Brian Kelley of FGL. Then in September, I got to reprise the role that launched my theater career: Captain Radames in Studio Tenn's concert production of Aida at TPAC. A nice full-circle moment to look back at the journey – I probably should have gotten some tattoos along the way. Maybe next year.

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(Note: This story leaves out many Bad Things, such as the jobs I lost, the relationships I torpedoed, the financial struggle buses, the big lessons learned, and the Stuff You Shouldn't Do. I'm happy to share. Talk to me if you want to know more.)

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