I have so many hours of dreaming logged in at my parents gas station in Chugiak, Alaska. Ring up a customer, dream… stock the shelves, dream… mop the floors, dream… plow the snow, dream… I had spent my whole life in this remote town asking the question “what am I gonna do with myself if I stay here?” so as soon as I had saved enough for a ticket and a guitar I moved to LA. I needed to find out…
My Dutch/Welsh father dropped out of 6th grade to survive the Great Depression by picking cotton for bowls of beans until he lied about his age to serve during the Korean War to support his parents… he was a self made man…he built our gas station with his own hands…he taught me to follow my bliss. My Filipino mother, who left her parents to board in another town and walked miles in the rain with a banana leaf for an umbrella to go to school, having sewed her own uniform and cooked her meals on a little fire as a child, believed in the American dream and made a new life in Alaska with greater possibilities for her children… she taught me that wit, intuition, resolve and improvisation can go a long way…the rest is left to fate or luck or the combustion of our individual spark.
Supposedly, I loved music since before I was born. My mom says that when she was pregnant with me, she craved piano so badly in fact that she bought this little spinet and took lessons. When I arrived I would turn my head toward sounds, imitating them when I could. I remember being very small and standing upright, reaching over my head to put my fingers on the piano. The keys felt very wide and too big for my hands but they made sense to me. I learned mostly by ear even though I took lessons from the age of 4–13. I never learned how to read notes. My teacher would assign a classical piece then I would ask her to play it for me. Our lessons came to an end when she figured out I was only really learning to play these songs by ear. All those years I had pretended to read the notes, I knew where I was on the page, but the shapes made no real sense to me, only the music itself made sense.
Although I knew the Hells Angels that would come through the gas station, I was also brought up in the church by my mother. There I was part of a choir and I learned a lot. I got into gospel music that I found on tape at the library..Martha Bass of Chess and Checker Records. By the time I was 14 I was a worship leader at my home church and at 16 joined the youth outreach to the homeless youth of Anchorage. We brought them food and they joined us in service. I was 17 when I got the notion to write an album. While volunteering at my college radio station it occurred to me that people made a living doing what I loved, so I thought I would give it a try.
With common sense, hard work and manual labor my upbringing at the gas station, pursuing music was a luxury. It wasn´t hard for me to save a lump of change and go to the city…I did the Hollywood thing hittin´ the streets with the demo I made at my friends house…at the time those were the only songs I had written…I mean I had played piano and sang in church since I was yay high but I was going by the seat of my pants, figuring out my sound as I wrote since “Fate” I decided to rework my sound. To come away from the exclusively singer songwriter label and dive back into the beats that gospel music had lured me in with. I missed being soulful. I wanted to make people feel the music not just listen to it. It took a long time to record what I heard in my head. A lot of collaborators were there for me, helping to coax it out. I let my inspiration have it’s way with me, to make something new.
I love it when a song comes on the radio and everyone knows the words. It’s the greatest sensation to completely fall into a moment in time, to be swept up, taken under the spell of a lyric a rhyme a melody. When songs evoke the response of turning them up and singing along, it’s magic. I tried to write an album like that.
About Me
I have so many hours of dreaming logged in at my parents gas station in Chugiak, Alaska. Ring up a customer, dream… stock the shelves, dream… mop the floors, dream… plow the snow, dream… I had spent my whole life in this remote town asking the question “what am I gonna do with myself if I stay here?” so as soon as I had saved enough for a ticket and a guitar I moved to LA. I needed to find out…
My Dutch/Welsh father dropped out of 6th grade to survive the Great Depression by picking cotton for bowls of beans until he lied about his age to serve during the Korean War to support his parents… he was a self made man…he built our gas station with his own hands…he taught me to follow my bliss. My Filipino mother, who left her parents to board in another town and walked miles in the rain with a banana leaf for an umbrella to go to school, having sewed her own uniform and cooked her meals on a little fire as a child, believed in the American dream and made a new life in Alaska with greater possibilities for her children… she taught me that wit, intuition, resolve and improvisation can go a long way…the rest is left to fate or luck or the combustion of our individual spark.
Supposedly, I loved music since before I was born. My mom says that when she was pregnant with me, she craved piano so badly in fact that she bought this little spinet and took lessons. When I arrived I would turn my head toward sounds, imitating them when I could. I remember being very small and standing upright, reaching over my head to put my fingers on the piano. The keys felt very wide and too big for my hands but they made sense to me. I learned mostly by ear even though I took lessons from the age of 4–13. I never learned how to read notes. My teacher would assign a classical piece then I would ask her to play it for me. Our lessons came to an end when she figured out I was only really learning to play these songs by ear. All those years I had pretended to read the notes, I knew where I was on the page, but the shapes made no real sense to me, only the music itself made sense.
Although I knew the Hells Angels that would come through the gas station, I was also brought up in the church by my mother. There I was part of a choir and I learned a lot. I got into gospel music that I found on tape at the library..Martha Bass of Chess and Checker Records. By the time I was 14 I was a worship leader at my home church and at 16 joined the youth outreach to the homeless youth of Anchorage. We brought them food and they joined us in service. I was 17 when I got the notion to write an album. While volunteering at my college radio station it occurred to me that people made a living doing what I loved, so I thought I would give it a try.
With common sense, hard work and manual labor my upbringing at the gas station, pursuing music was a luxury. It wasn´t hard for me to save a lump of change and go to the city…I did the Hollywood thing hittin´ the streets with the demo I made at my friends house…at the time those were the only songs I had written…I mean I had played piano and sang in church since I was yay high but I was going by the seat of my pants, figuring out my sound as I wrote since “Fate” I decided to rework my sound. To come away from the exclusively singer songwriter label and dive back into the beats that gospel music had lured me in with. I missed being soulful. I wanted to make people feel the music not just listen to it. It took a long time to record what I heard in my head. A lot of collaborators were there for me, helping to coax it out. I let my inspiration have it’s way with me, to make something new.
I love it when a song comes on the radio and everyone knows the words. It’s the greatest sensation to completely fall into a moment in time, to be swept up, taken under the spell of a lyric a rhyme a melody. When songs evoke the response of turning them up and singing along, it’s magic. I tried to write an album like that.