I have been playing music with my brothers and family since we were young kids. We grew up spending a lot of time in our parents' basement studio in Trumbull, Connecticut where my dad's band would practice and jam, always surrounded by guitars and music.
For years I played and practiced on an upside down guitar until I was about seven or eight when my dad accepted the fact that I was a lefty and strung up a guitar for me left handed. It was an old Fernandez travel guitar with a built in speaker, and is still in my collection to this day. Early on my influences came mostly from our father, such as Jeff Beck, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jimi Hendrix, and Frank Zappa. As time went on I began to find the playing of Shawn Lane, Tommy Emmanuel, Buckethead, and Guthrie Govan, all of whom became big influences on my style.
Once I had a proper guitar I basically never put it down and never left its side. I would bring my guitar with me to school everyday in order to practice during recess, lunch, or whenever I was allowed to. It quickly turned into an obsession and I would practice well into the next morning most nights for years, often falling asleep with my guitar in order to practice first thing the next morning. To say I became addicted to it would be a vast understatement. I knew from a very young age all I wanted to do was play guitar.
