If you are lucky you have never sustained an injury which kept you from playing guitar for more than a few days at most. I have had various injuries that have cost me about two years of playing time that I can never have back, not to mention playing after an injury and being limited by healing until most of your physical sikills return. Do yourself a favor, and never drive in a car with your arm dangling out the window. You just might end up having your arm dangling from your wrist like I did. I was driving home from seeing a band one night, with my arm out the window feeling the breeze flow through my fingers, when I hit the curb and my car flipped over on its roof. The car then hit a telephone pole upside down, shearing it off and flipping the car end over end before it started rolling sideways. Sometime during the cars rolling 4 times, my wrist (still hanging out of the window) was caught between the pavement on the road and the roof of my car. Both bones were snapped clean (instead of being crushed, thank God) and ripped through most of the flesh and skin on my wrist, leaving my hand down beside my wrist with both forearm bones sticking out of my arm like beef jerky being pulled out of a blister pak.(sorry for the graphic imagery) I had other injuries, but none would affect me like the damage to my fretting hand and arm. As you may have guessed, I was drunk and am ashamed to this day, after 13 years of allowing myself to be so irresponsable . I just thank God that I was alone and no other vehicles, people, or personal property of others were damaged or involved. I left the scene in shock not knowing I was injured, and passed out in a parking lot as I became disorientated.(From blood loss I would later find out) I woke up to the sunrise in a pool of my own blood in an empty lot, and discovered my wrist and hand swollen to the size of my thigh. I got to my feet (barely) and began to walk towards the hospitlal. I don't know how long it took me to get there, but I know I passed out and fell down at least once. I walked in to the emergency room about 6 hours after my wreck with bad compound fractures of both bones and severe infection from having my bones and flesh exposed to the air and whatever else crawled on my wound while I was unconscious. After three operations and 2 1/2 weeks in the hospital I was released and began physical therapy to try and regain movement and feeeling in my hand and wrist. Trying to play my guitar over the next six months was the best therapy for me, and after about a year I was able to use my hand again and had regained all feeling except in the middle finger, which is still numb today but fully moblie and usable. I hope nobody else has to go through this self induced agony, and I hope the most serious injury anyone has to deal with is a hangnail that keeps them from using a finger for a day or two.

A short history of my music background and bands I have performed or recorded with.

Background I was raised in Huntington, Indiana where I grew up listening to Led Zeppelin, Boston, Queen, Styx, Foreigner and Journey when I was a boy. When I was a little older I began listening to a lot of early heavy metal, preferring melodic music more than bands like AC/DC and Black Sabbath, and listening to more European artists like Scorpions, Def Lepard and others with melodic guitar. I began playing guitar my senior year at Huntington North High School and took lessons for about 2 months to learn some chords and radio songs. From there I began to devlop my ear and teach myself songs by Scorpions, B.T.O, Sammy Hagar and other artists. Playing in several garage bands with friends and people around Huntington, I soon grew frustrated with playing cover songs when I was always writing original music. In '86 I moved to Fort Wayne (where I was born and lived until I was 11) to try to form an all original band. I found a few musicians here and there who were into original music, but they always ended up more into playing covers in the bars. Growing frustrated again I knew I had to move to a bigger city to find an original scene. Before I could relocate I crashed my car coming home from the Three Rivers Festival in Fort Wayne and almost lost my left hand.. After months of healing and a couple of years of getting my playing level back to the level I was before the wreck.. In '89 I left my family and friends I had known most of my life to move to Tampa, Florida to play and record original music. Upon arriving in July of '89 I joined INJUSTICE and rerecorded four solos on their 8 song tape that they had just finished, because the producer did not like the singer/guitarists guitar solos. After playing a few live dates, and being featured artist on 98 rocks Homegrown show in the fall, I left INJUSTICE to pursue a heavier direction. After looking at several metal bands, I began writing songs for MEAN STREAK in Tampa, but I was not comfortable there and parted ways after a month. After auditioning for FIRST BORN I was hired and l picked up their songs as we began to write new material to record at Full Sail studios in Orlando. After a scheduling conflict that was not verified before we hauled our equipment to record. I grew tired of the 50+ mile round trip 3 times a week and began the search for something closer to my home. I soon joined XANTHIA just after they recorded their demo tape, and when the singer quit, we hired another and went back to the studio to rerecord the vocal tracks and to put a couple of my solos on the otherwise finished tape. 3 months later after jamming with several bands but not joining any, I found a drummer and another guitarist together, and we set out to find a bass player and vocalist( the vocalist was the original singer from XANTHIA) and INNER SANCTUM was complete. After polishing our material for the studio we went into Audio Lab in Tampa and recorded our demo tape with four songs. This was the first time I had been able to write and record professionaly my all original material. After playing for about a year and a half and building a large fan base we had a show with three other hard working local bands for Metal Masters tv show. Due to hard work and heavy flyer distribution, we packed out GK's in Tampa with a record 600+ crowd through the doors, the majority of which had to be asked to leave at closing time because they did not want the music to end. Shortly afterward we parted ways with the other members and the drummer and I auditioned many musicians and formed INCITE and recorded our EP a few months later. The bass player was not working out and we were fortunate to have Dave Abel from ICED EARTH ( whom Greg Seymour our drummer had formed from the beginnings) and played many highly energetic shows until we fired the singer several months later. After many auditions we decided to part ways, and since then I have been composing original music on my own including heavy music as well as piano pieces. My wife Carol and I were married at The Venetian in Las Vegas, Nevada on November 3rd, 2001.

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