10,000 day sleep

My singing journey.
I was a missile brat, for those of you that don’t know- my father worked for the Air Force on the Minuteman missile projects, and so we were moved from small town small town in the middle of nowhere desolate areas where I was the new kid, despised by all.

So I kept myself entertained by singing, I was very impressed by Michael Jackson’s voice especially that he could sing higher than I could even though I was probably only 10 years old.

All the music that I was exposed to back then was pop on the radio, and then miraculously our school library had a 45 of Black Sabbath electric funeral and Iron Man.

I was born again that day.

Something changed inside me as a resonated deeply with that sound

I sang those two songs endlessly driving everyone insane

My first band was in high school, my first keyboard player was Randy Gaines also known as random damage, from Myth fame (Proto Queensryche). We did cheesy radio covers because that’s what everybody else could play in the band, we went through lots of different drummers guitar players and such, I sang foreigner Boston Styx... those kinds of things but I really didn’t like it, I preferred heavier things like sabbath Zepplin Dio deep purple things like that.

Or progressive music such as Peter Gabriel Kate bush in the like

I kept working on and off with Randy, but nothing really ever took off because I really didn’t understand song writing as well as I should have, and I was a bit aspie at the time, I was painfully introverted and somewhat socially maladroit.

I ended up working with a lot of really good musicians, but nothing really ever took off because of a lack of songwriting ability and my social ineptness, You had to know how to work the social system in Seattle back then, Look the right way, say the right things go to the right places, know the right people, stab the right backs

My cousin Kelly Gray and Randy started working with this new guy Geoff Tate and so I faded from the seeing someone, then the grunge movement came in and washed away the market for classic rock vocalist for a while.
I gave up a lifetime of singing shortly afterwards, I got psyched out.

My soul died and I went into a deep trance of 10,000 days.
Recently Kelly Gray, the guitar player that works with Geoff Tate sometimes, and produced Candlebox happened to ask me ... hey man why did you quit singing?

He’s the first person that ever asked me that.

I am a completely different person now with a completely different set of skills and now we return after a 10,000 day sleep.