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Music is as old as the human condition and when I first tried writing songs I found my experience of music, like the human condition, to be riddled with complex questions and intangibles. "How can I get the most out of music?", I wondered. "Which is the best key and what are the most meaningful words?" I never listened to the advice I was given and I started to wonder when I'd make it big and eventually I got worn down by the overhead of trying to be someone more special and clever than myself. So, this is the story of how I recovered...

I was born in Zimbabwe and lived there until I was 3 or 4 years old. I grew up around a great family and amidst a tamed but beautiful, natural landscape. I found growing up in America difficult because money mattered a lot and I didn't have very much and also because I was small and made for easy pickin'. I stopped playing team sports after about age 8 and I am proud to say that I was generally a poor student. I learned to play guitar on my own and I learned how to distract people buy telling them things that would disguise the fact that, generally, I was trying to get away with not doing what they wanted me to do - most of the time. But, we all got along and I have had many great friends. What I've always wanted, though, was inspiration.

Music was a solitary activity which was also fun. No one picked on me or judged me and once I got a guitar... it was free forever! So, I started to write songs in the hopes that I'd write great songs that would inspire me and redeem my suburban youth by lifting it to a higher plane where everything would be much more energetic and meaningful. I filled two notebooks with songs in my teens and early twenties - two notebooks of second rate nonsense. Then, one day, at the airport I penned a song which, to this day, I credit with my continued enthusiasm for songwriting. It was a sad song in A minor about hope and trial, called Stronger Dreams. Five years after I wrote that song, I released my first album on Tangled Records. That was June 2003 and I was 26.

I've gone through writing spells that were very productive and other times, I've found that everything that oozes from my brain is mushy mush. Between 2003 and 2005, I played many shows in many places and I had the pleasure of playing with some great artists but, I hadn't made it big. I'd made it small. I worked very hard to make it small. I even gave up being vegetarian after 4 straight months of gigs and an emotional hurricane that swept me up with gale-force winds and deposited me somehow on the other end of 2004. After that, I started seeking clearer harmony and melody in my life - peace.

In 2006 I decided that I couldn't be the artist that I wanted to be without dedicating my life to my art. I quit my day job and I went on tour. I nearly ran out of money in the Pacific Northwest, ultimately pulling into my brother's house in northern California driving on fumes and surviving on bottled water two weeks later. But I was a different person. I'd been to Canada and back. I'd seen the beaches, the mountains and the valleys. I'd crossed the borders and sung to the people and I had seen, first hand, that my message was valuable. 2006 was a cornerstone year. I did 3 more west coast tours and one cross-country tour between 2006 and 2007. I became a full-time musician and I overcame my fears about success, money and security. I continue to overcome my fears everyday.

2006 and 2007 also made me a father, the inventor of the San Diego HAT Awards and an active music journalist for the San Diego Troubadour. As I commit more of myself to my art, the world seems ready with more assignments. I am happy, wealthy, secure and successful. Most importantly I've rediscovered the moment. Thank you all for your love and support... you know who you are and I couldn't have gotten here without of you.