Massachusetts-based singer, songwriter, guitar player who began performing professionally at the age of just 15 years old. He is a co-founder of the band The Sighs, who were signed to Virgin Records and toured with such artists as The Gin Blossoms and The Spin Doctors. As a solo artist, last year he released a ten-song album, which he did with an Oscar-winning songwriter and producer. At the time of this episode’s release, he will be performing as part of a five-week tour all throughout Germany, after having performed in August in Los Angeles.
“My current CD… it’s on Omad Records out of New York City… Oscar-winning producer … his name is John DeNicola, and he produced the record, and we recorded at his studio in upstate New York.”
“I normally try not to force songs. I kind of let them force me, meaning they keep recurring over and over and over in my head until finally they drive me crazy to (where) I have to either play piano or guitar, usually guitar.”
“Normally for me, I usually hear a melody, a vocal melody first, and then I'll flush out the chords. Occasionally, if it's a riff driven song, I'll come up with the guitar part first and then put a melody over it. Normally it's the other way around.”
“Even though we're not geographically close anymore, because, America’s a big country… we just recorded all our parts separately, but it is the four guys. It is the band members and definitely sounds like us. So, we just recently finished that, a Christmas song … Omad Records is putting out a Christmas compilation pretty soon.”
“At 15 years old, we were playing – we weren't playing, working in bars yet – we were doing state fairs, talent shows, the local Elks Club … the Eastern States Exposition Fair – we played there. And it was just one acoustic guitar and two vocals. But where we really got a lot of work was, strangely, was weddings was the big one.”
“I remember sending these off to, like, A&M Records, Capitol Records. I still have a bag of a bunch of rejection letters. Some of them quite thoughtful, some are just standard, ‘not looking for new,’ you know, ‘not interested,’ whatever, but some of them you can tell they actually listened to it and said, ‘This is good, you know, we're going to pass for now, but please send us anything else in the future.’ We thought that was pretty cool, but we managed to get a lot of airplay.”
“They took us into The Hit Factory, a great studio in New York. And they produced these demos… and they shopped them around. So, I remember being in meetings with Sony and Capitol. We wound up signing with Virgin Records.”
“All of a sudden, we had plane tickets. All of a sudden, we had house keys to a condo in L.A. And we were recording five days a week at A&M Studios… We recorded in studio A where they did ‘We Are The World’.”
“We've kind of focused, I would say, the last 10 years on the sort of Germanic speaking countries; Germany, Austria, Switzerland, those seem to be the best markets for us. We've loved all the other cultures and all the other markets. It's different for other artists. I know bands that are killing it in Spain, but for us, we sort of keep going back to these markets where we know we're gonna have a full house.”
“Burn That Kingdom”
“Steal Your Heart”