Born Into Music
According to my parents, Pat Metheny’s music was playing in the room when I was born. It would be many years before his music became central to my own life, but music was present from the beginning.
I was raised in a deeply musical household. My mother is not a musician herself, but she has always been an unusually passionate listener, and much of my earliest taste came from riding in the car with her and absorbing the music my parents loved. My father is a gifted piano player. I grew up hearing him play at home, watching him rehearse with bands, and attending his performances at festivals and other community events. Long before I understood anything about making music professionally, live music already felt like a normal and essential part of life.
I received my first guitar when I was eleven and began taking lessons soon afterward. Playing quickly became one of the most important parts of my identity. I learned the music that fascinated me, played with friends, and followed my curiosity through classic rock and into an increasingly wide range of styles. In my later teens and early twenties, I began traveling with an acoustic guitar, singing more, and learning fingerstyle playing. That period drew me toward the folk and singer-songwriter traditions of the Pacific Northwest and directly led to my first serious band, The Sky Colony.
