I was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, but today I live in the Portland, Oregon area.

Most of my band experience came with an indie rock group called Tone Deaf Teens. This project consumed my life for about five years, and there was a lot of running around involved as we tried to convince people of our greatness. We released a 5-song EP, a 15-song album and played as many shows as we could.

Along the way, I started up a label called Crash the Luau Records, with the goal of exposing the world to Hawaii-based rock music. We signed two bands, learned a lot, and lost quite a bit of money.

After moving to the mainland, I started a new band called Upper80, played a few shows and put out a small 4-song CD. Burnout and new time constraints then pushed me out of the band scene and into the garage, where I started working on home recordings of solo material. So after about 15 years of wandering through the music business forest, that’s where things stand at this point.

Bio

I was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii. Actually, raised in Wahiawa, Hawaii, which is a little town halfway in between Honolulu and Oahu’s North Shore.

Today I’m a fan of a wide spectrum of music, but when I was young, the two artists that had the most impact on me were Iron Maiden, who introduced me to aggressive, yet melodic rock music, and Billy Joel, who cloaked angry lyrics in a radio-friendly pop shell.

My first “band” was myself and a couple of college buddies recording profanity-laced tirades in our dorm bathroom on a boombox. Our sound basically consisted of two guitars played through crappy little amps, lots of screaming, and the occasional plastic chili-bucket drum solo. We made three cassette-only “albums” and one home video of us walking around the college campus, lip-synching to our songs as they played on a car stereo.

After college, two of us hooked up with an actual rhythm section and started something called Tone Deaf Teens. This project consumed my life for the better part of five years, and there was a lot of running around involved as we tried to convince people of our greatness. We tossed out two collections of recorded music (a 5-song EP and a 15-song full length album) and played as many shows as we could.

Along the way, I started up a record label called Crash the Luau Records, with the mission of exposing the world to Hawaii-based rock music. We signed two other bands besides Tone Deaf Teens, learned a lot, and lost a decent amount of money.

Then, partially for family reasons and also because I needed a change of scenery, I moved to a place called Vancouver, Washington, which is right next to Portland, Oregon. I started up a new band called Upper80, played a few shows and put out a small 4-song CD. I also taught a class at a local community college on the joys and woes of releasing independent recordings.

Burnout and new time constraints then pushed me out of the band scene and into the garage, where I started working on home recordings of solo material. So after about fifteen years of wandering through the music business forest, that’s basically where things stand at this point.