I was born in Brooklyn, New York and grew up just outside Detroit in Southern Michigan. I loved music from an early age and finally convinced my parents to buy me a guitar for my fourteenth birthday. During the next two years my father was partners with John Sinclair (former manager of the MC5) promoting music shows in the Detroit area. Through this association I got to see the likes of Stevie Ray Vaughan, Buddy Guy, and Koko Taylor local bars in Detroit. While in my late teens, I really got bit by the blues bug through a Luther Allison CD of my father's. While I had taken one year of lessons and tinkered on the guitar until this time period I still wasn't much of a player. As this point I began to study in Detroit privately with master teacher Robert Noll, former sideman in Albert Collins Icebreakers. I studied the blues and general guitar theory with Robert for three years before moving to Seattle.

Through Robert's and Detroit public radio's influence I heard a great range of blues artists. My main influences are Muddy Waters, Albert, B.B. and Freddie King, Luther Allison, Johnny Winter, Son House, Buddy Guy, Albert Collins, and James Blood Ulmer. Part of my education also included watching Robert perform, who was voted Entertainer, and Blues Artist of the Year a number of times in Detroit during the late 80's. Through this association I also learned the importance of holding the audience attention during performances. I became a member of an original Rock-Blues band in Detroit "Billy and the Barracudas" and played those same stages I saw my blues heroes perform on as a teenager. I then moved to Seattle to further his musical endeavors.

I furthered my studies in Seattle at the University of Washington's Ethnomusicology Program (B.A. 1998). I began as a teacher's assistant for a music theory class at the UW and then taught at Youth Advancement through Music and Art leading a blues ensemble and teaching private students in Freemont. I've since taught 10 or so private students weekly, taught a class on Blues History at the Experimental College at the University of Washington in January of 2003, taught blues ensembles at The Seattle Drum School, led my own band, The Stone Crazy Blues Band, as well as organized a Microtonal Guitar Festival.