Well, as the saying goes, be careful what you wish for, it just might come true.  I've been wishing for many years to be in a position to pursue music as a full time career, and in February 2005, that wish came true!  Now that Pam and I have successfully raised our kids to adult age, we're now in the 2nd year of our new Musical Circus life.  Time does indeed fly when you're having (too much) fun.

Spending the last 20 years with Skeptical Cats and all it's past incarnations gigging only once a month, or sometimes only once every few months, then jumping head first into doing 200-250 nights a year, you quickly develop an appreciation for what our musical heroes have gone through.  Don't get me wrong, I love this new life, and as long as my voice (and my liver) hold out, I'll be doing this until, well, just until.  I love to sing and play songs for people and for myself, whether it's one of my own or one of my favorite songs from decades gone by...and it's worth the hard work, the long nights, and long mornings.  There's no better cure for the mid-life crisis than regularly coming home after a gig and breakfast, accidentally waking up your adult children, or having them knock on your door at 2pm saying "jeez Dad, get UP already!".  Hey, I gotta get my 8 hours sleep in just like the rest of the world does.

Dayton, Ohio is not necessarily the easiest town to play music in 4-5 nights a week...venues are limited.  But I've been lucky enough to have a number of people give me a chance to do it, and somehow I'm able to do it while playing whatever I want to play.  I often ask myself, "why am I one of the only guys in this area doing this, what's WRONG with me?!"  It took a bit of time, but thanks to a lot of great friends and fans, and club/pub/restaurant owners who treat Pam and I like family, I'm really enjoying playing night after night and I think (hope?) the guys in the band are also enjoying working more often than we ever did in the past.  Now we've got to find the time to record some new songs in '06, and I'm looking forward to doing a lot of traveling as a solo act and with the band whenever we can pull it off.  Dayton will always be "home base", I love the families and places that have taken me in to provide a regular, consistent night to play.  So along with that I'm planning for 2006-07 to go out on the road a week or 2 at a time, to warm climate destinations during the winter like Florida, Arizona, etc., then doing a week or two around the Midwest, NY, LA and rest of the country throughout the year.  I also hope to play in England at least 2 weeks out of every year until I die or can't sing or play anymore ;-)

IN THE BEGINNING...there was a "Bottle of Wine"

My obsession with music, so I have been embarrassingly reminded by my parents and sisters over the years, began long before I actually owned an instrument. I am told that as a toddler, I would stand with my hands on the edge of the 1970s console stereo system that we had, and bounce up and down to 'Bottle of Wine' by the Fireballs. Over. And Over And Over. And Over. And Over. Apparently this went on for many months. Was it the subject matter of the song?

I am the middle child and only son born to incredible parents, Warner Merle and Anna Lou Mitchell.  I can't say enough about how great a childhood I was blessed with.  My older sister is Lisa, by almost 2 years, and my younger sister Lynn was born 7 years after I was.  My sisters are cool and we've always gotten along great.  I was born in Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton on 4/20/67; the first house we lived in was on Spinning Road near Wright Patterson Air Force Base. I have no recollection of anything 'musical' from the first couple of homes we lived in, or much of anything else for that matter.  We then moved to Beavercreek, in a nice ranch on a big wooded lot. I have a few memories from that time, but none that are musically related, other than one embarrassing story. It again involves me standing next to the stereo, but this time in my room. I would tie a towel around my neck, so it draped down like a rock star cape, put on the dark shades and I would pretend to be pounding out the piano parts to whatever song I was listening to on the big clunky 1970s headphones I was listening to.  I remember one time being in full K.C. mode, eyes closed, my back to the door, head thrown back, swaying side to side, with That's The Way or some other insipid K.C. and the Sunshine Band song blasting in my 8 year old ears. I was rockin! Then my dad came in my room to get my attention and scared the SHIT out of me by tapping on my shoulder. I can still see the little smile on his face, knowing that I was painfully embarrassed, but trying his best not to actually bust out laughing at me. Being a glam rocker was hard work in those days.

We moved to Englewood, Ohio in 1976…this is where my 'musical career' began in earnest. My first instrument was a snare drum, I briefly played in the 6^th grade band, but quickly found out that I had no patience for learning sheet music, or for going "rata tat tat" on the snare drum.  I wanted nothing more than to be a Drummer, a rocker! My school chum named Greg Norman (I can't believe that name just came to me, I haven't thought about him in 25 years) had one of those cheapo Ohio Art drum sets (yes, the same company that makes the Etch-a-Sketch), I remember going over to his house to buy it from him. My snare drum added to that Ohio Art 4 piece made for a decent little kit. For about 2 hours. I quickly broke all the heads on the Ohio Art set (it WAS a toy set, after all). I would listen to stuff on the headphones and play along; I remember the first album I ever bought was Cheap Trick Live At Budakan, then Kiss Alive I shortly after that. I've seen a picture of me in my room behind that kit, funny stuff.

I must have, at some point, pieced together a better set of tom toms and kick at some point, because you couldn't buy replacement heads for the Ohio Art kit.  By this time I am playing along with Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin records more than anything else. I was soooo into both of those bands in my 11-13 year old days. I had absolutely no interest in guitar or any other instrument; I was a Drummer. Or so I thought.

Fast forward to 1981^ish - We've moved to a different house in Englewood. I'm 13 or 14 years old, and I was playing drums with a guy down the street named Todd Crook, who was just a monster player, even at 14, in the style of Van Halen and other modern players of the day. I would go over to his garage and play drums and sing lead on “Dance The Night Away” and other VH songs that Todd knew. I think a guy named Jared Walters would occasionally play bass, but I think mainly he just argued and sometimes fist fought with Todd. Todd's younger brother Sean was always there too, getting in Todd’s way, pissing him off, and trying to get his guitar when we would take breaks.  Sean and I are great friends to this day, our lives brought back together by the sad passing of Todd about 9 years ago.  Sean is an even more impressive player in all styles, and in fact is the best overall guitar player that I have ever met.  We created a CD together a few years back called Boogit, and Sean is now working with myself and the band on some new original material that is going to be submitted to the president of a major label that Sean has met with.  Fingers crossed.

It was during this time that my dad brought home a Lotus Les Paul copy guitar. My dad is in the insurance business; he often came across good 'deals' in his line of work. I was mildly interested at first, I was a Drummer after all.  I remember my first amp was one of those early Crate amps that were actually in a wooden crate case.  I would tune the guitar to open E, because I didn't know how to play chords, and frankly didn't care. I got a Big Muff pedal from Todd, and suddenly my interest in guitar started to intensify a little bit.  This coincided with something that absolutely influenced me as much or more than anything, or anyone--we had an early version of a Panasonic VHS player (remember, this is late 1980, early 1981). I'm not sure how it happened, but we ended up with a copy of Woodstock. Absolutely, totally and completely changed my life. I became an Instant Hippy. I literally learned how to play guitar by watching the sections with Jimi Hendrix, Pete Townshend and Alvin Lee over and over again. I mean literally 200 times I've seen that movie. I would blast that video while playing along with it, my Lotus Les Paul, my Big Muff and my Crate amp. However, I was still playing one finger chords in open tuning...Todd Crook could see that my interest in drumming was quickly being replaced by guitar, and he kept bugging me saying "I can show you how to play all of the basic chords in one afternoon."  I kept putting him off...until I simply HAD to know how to play real chords on the guitar. 

That day was September 30, 1981. I'm not sure why I remember that, but September 30, 1981 was THE DAY I became a guitarist. I finally relented. Todd showed me E, A, G, D, C, F, and how to do a Barre chord...the rest is history. I instantly 'had it', couldn't believe I had waited that long to figure it out.  It was so easy! I simply HAD to have a Fender Stratocaster (thanks Jimi).  I got my first Strat from Dayton Band, a chocolate brown 1978 model with a maple neck. I took 3 formal lessons from a guy named Rick at Dayton Band, he showed me how to play some minor chords, and most importantly, showed me how to read tab and how to practice the basic lead scales...I had everything I needed in 3 practices. Once someone shows you how to teach yourself, if you're obsessed like I was with it, you can get pretty far in a short time.  I played that damn guitar every waking moment. Less than 3 months later, I am leading a trio as the guitarist and singer in a band called Night Riot (bloody awful name, the first of many), in front of literally hundreds and hundreds of people from Northmont High School at a place called Forest Park Arena. Walt Slade was on bass, and Steve Adams was filling in for our regular drummer at the time, Mike Ackerman. Mike had gotten in trouble at school or something, and wasn't able to make that gig.  Walt is still a great friend and plays in a very successful local band called Element. I still have the cassette recording from that first show...it is really awful. Although I quickly mastered how to play chords and some basic pentatonic solos, one thing I apparently hadn't mastered was knowing when I was painfully out of TUNE.  Oh well...I had only been playing for 2 and 1/2 months...we were playing on the side stage as a warm up act for the older guys at school, Iron Cross...and besides, who needs to be in tune when you have premeditated theatrics instead.

Remember that old Lotus Les Paul? Well, I had me an idear...I wanted my debut show to be 'a smash'. With Pete Townshend's Woodstock performance still very much in my mind, I took that old Lotus, painted it orange with black Eddie Van Halen stripes on it (not sure why I did that), and for our 2nd to last song, during 'Fire' or 'Foxy Lady' (I can't remember and simply can't bring myself to listen to the tape again to verify), I switched from my beloved Strat to the battered, and now hideously painted Lotus, and in the exact same way that Pete smashes his guitar at Woodstock, I smashed that guitar as hard as I could on the tile floor...parts of it came flying off into the crowd in front of me, I remember Chet Pease ducking out of the way just in time, despite his formidable buzz...everyone was just completely shocked that I would smash what appeared to be a perfectly good guitar. At the same time, Walt had strapped on his 'spare' bass, and was pulling the strings off of it in rock star theatrical fashion...except when he got to the big low E string, he completely sliced open his thumb, and I mean DEEP...blood gushing everywhere. We quickly switched back to our 'real' instruments for the encore, 'Paranoid' (but of course, what ELSE would be the encore of a rock band's first ever concert?). Walt was in a state of shock blood was streaming down his hand onto the guitar and floor, like a Gene Simmons prop...people told us afterward they thought it was part of the show. Umm...it wasn't. I think Walt actually had to get stitches.

Another memory from that time period happened at the same place, Forest Park Arena, at another gig a month or two later.  The biggest, tallest bear of a guy from Northmont named John Freedley was helping out the band at the show, and was also in charge of our pyrotechnics for the evening...what concert by a bunch of high school kids would be complete without some big explosions of smoke and light at the end of the last song?  John wired up 2 home made explosives, one on each side of the big stage.  He had some sort wire that ran down off the stage that connected to some sort of detonator.  We finished our last song, I don't remember what it was...I'm sure we had discussed earlier how we would do the last big "baaang" on the last note of whatever song it was, so that John could time the explosions with it.  He did, but only one of the things went off.  No big deal, we just started packing our stuff up, but John really wanted to know what went wrong...he's looking at the wiring, looking at the tube holding the explosives...looking IN the tube that holds the explosives...putting his face right over top of the tube holding the explosives.  You guessed it.  BOOOOOM.  Right in his FACE.  Here's this 6 foot 7 monster of a guy stumbling back from the impact, hands on his face...we all freaked.  First thing to determine was whether or not he still had his eyeballs, and if he could see.  Thank God, yes.  His face is completely blackened, his hair singed and blown back.  Someone got him some Vaseline and he smeared it all over his face, which was already starting to blister all over.  What a sight...this big monster of a human being, walking around helping us carry equipment out, with a Vaseline covered blackened face, hair almost all burnt off.  THAT, my friends, is RAWK.  He wasn't gonna go to no stinking emergency room!  A sad end to this story is that John died of an aneurysm a few years ago...he was a successful sound man in the area, working the board for many national acts.  John was the best, we all miss him.

1982-1984 were fairly active years musically, although gigs for high school aged kids were hard to come by.  Most of these 2 years were spent recording in my bedroom, and playing/partying with a group of friends at Jeff and Mark Badiner's house in Englewood.  I also discovered the Beatles during this time period...yes I realize I was a bit late in discovering them...but I became more obsessed over them than words can say.  I read every single book I could get my hands on, acquired their entire catalog in a matter of about 2 weeks, and just immersed myself in their lives, music and culture.  Reading about how they recorded made me want to experiment with recording as well.  I didn't have a multi-track recording machine (a couple of years after this is when the cheap 4 track cassette machines appeared).  I would play a drum track into a microphone that was plugged into a component cassette deck on my stereo; then I would blast that track through the stereo speakers, playing the guitar or singing along with it, into the mic on a boom box sitting next to the stereo speakers and my guitar amp.  High tech stuff.  You can imagine what this sounded like after the 5th or 6th track.  I still have some of those recordings, mostly Beatles songs like "Rain" and a couple of really awful originals.  You are not allowed to hear them ;-P

Most of my time outside of my 'studio' during 82-84 was spent jamming with guys like Jeff Badiner (bass), Kevin Tate (drums, and my best friend during this time period), Tiny Goldick (guitar...and yes that's what his name is), Joey Blinko (another drummer), and a few other musicians who came and went through the Badiner household after school (or during it many times!) and at house parties.  Typical material from these days were things like 45 minute improvs/long psychedelic jams; blues influenced jamming, some Beatles, Stones, old Sabbath, etc.  Badiner's father Fred, a very kind and generous man, would come home after a long day of work as a shoe salesman at Elder Beerman or someplace like that and see all of us in the house yet again, playing War Pigs at maximum volume...he would walk in and say "nooooo Jeff, I told you, no jamming today, nooooo jaaaammminnnng!".  Poor guy.  I have lots of recordings from this time period, some of them are pretty interesting, especially the experimental instrumental jams.  

A few memorable gigs during this time period happened at the high school.  The first was, I believe, in 1983, when the still dreadfully named Night Riot opened up for Iron Cross (same band we opened for at Forest Park Arena where I smashed my guitar and Walt sliced his hand open).  We were playing in the gym, on a nice big stage, and to a crowd of probably 200-300 kids.  The lineup of the band was a bit different as I remember...a guy named Steve Elder was the lead singer, complete with a VH T-shirt and the big fuzzy white leg warmers like what David Lee Roth was wearing at the time.  I was wearing what was undoubtedly the first MTV T-shirt ever seen by anyone at Northmont High...my dad sold cable vision part time and brought the shirt home from the office.  It was just a couple of years after MTV launched, when it was still cool and still actually played music videos.  (By the way, let me take this opportunity to say that there is no lower form of life and intelligence on this planet than the culture that MTV has been selling to young people for the last 15 years).  I believe our drummer for this gig was Joe Elliot, who was a good drummer with a really big double bass set, lots of toms, etc.  I can't remember much of what we played, but it probably had a bit of up tempo rock stuff by Billy Squire, Van Halen (which I'm sure I was awful at playing).  The only thing I do remember is at one point we were playing "Behind Blue Eyes", trying to do the harmony vocals, and it was just horrendous...the afore mentioned John Freedley could be heard laughing loudly into the boom box recording as we butchered those harmonies.  We did end up with our picture in the school year book that year, one picture of Steve Elder by himself that had the caption, "Having fun imitating David Lee Roth?", and another picture of the entire band up at the edge of the stage, clapping along with the kids that had "rushed the stage".  I believe the caption says something like "Everyone joins in".  We wuz real starz, man.

The other memorable gig was sometime in 1984--Walt, myself and an old family friend named Jeff Robinson played at the Northmont Talent Show, which was held in the newly finished Commons area of the school.  It was actually a fairly high pressure gig for a group of high school kids as I remember...there were hundreds of people crammed into the commons area, many parents included.  I believe this was the first time that my parents came to an actual gig.  We played 2 sets, or was it 2 separate nights?  Either way, I know we played a Hendrix-like version of Johnny B. Goode (basically the arrangement heard on "Jimi Plays Berkeley", a bluesy instrumental original, and....the 3rd song escapes me.  Maybe "I Can't Explain" or something like that?  I do remember that on our 2nd set, the ever present, ever buzzed Chet Pease was yelling "play some Doors!", so after our scheduled 3 songs I launched into a quick "Roadhouse Blues", which was Against The Rules.  We went over our allotted time, and Jeff (our drummer) was extremely pissed off at me for doing an unannounced, unrehearsed song.  Chet loved it, I loved it, it was RAWK.  They all got over it ;-)

1984-1986 turned out to be a very pivotal, transitional time period in my life in so many positive ways.  My parents moved us from Englewood to Oakwood in the spring of 1984, but allowed me to commute from Oakwood to Northmont High School in Englewood so that I could graduate with the people I had grown up with.  I'm not sure why they gave me so much rope and trusted their 17 year old son to drive completely across the Miami Valley, easily 45 minutes one way, to continue to go to school in Englewood.  I guess because I was such a good boy!  Either way, if they hadn't decided to move to Oakwood, who knows how my life would have turned out...I would not have met Pam, we wouldn't have Jessica and Nick Jr., and would never have met the great circle of friends and musicians that I spend most of my time with now.  Pam lived the next street over from our house on Far Hills Ave. in Oakwood...I could literally throw a rock from my yard into hers.  

My senior year started in the fall of 1984, and I was still driving to Englewood each morning for school.  I was often quite late getting there.  It was during these final few months at Northmont High School that I was reconnected with my 6th grade buddy, Scott Porter, in music class.  We were friends at Northwood elementary during our 6th grade year, but lost contact with each other until our senior year in high school.  I can say without hesitation that Scott Porter has turned me on to more groups, bands, solo artists and genres of music than anyone I had met before or since.  If you can believe it, I wasn't even very aware of Pink Floyd until Scott brought some of their records to school one day saying, "you will LOVE this stuff!".  He was also the first person I had ever met that was into Frank Zappa, Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon, Carole King, James Taylor;  Hammond B3 jazz/funk/soul giants like Jack McDuff, Johnny Hammond Smith, Groove Holmes; Jazz guitar giants like Wes Montgomery, Pat Martino, George Benson, etc.  He also was the person that introduced me to progressive rock/jazz fusion, especially one of my all time favorite bands, Soft Machine (their first 3 albums are among my personal favorite albums of all time).  Nobody I knew then or now has a more voracious appetite for quality, sophistication and diversity in the music he consumes...Scott is a true Audiophile and has had a huge impact on me musically over the years.

Scott and I started playing together a lot, and especially absorbing a lot of new music.  By new I don't mean "current" at the time, just the stuff mentioned above.  I remember he had a really hideous white Peavy electric guitar, with a really wild "r-o-c-k" shape to it, totally not his type of guitar but it's what he had at the time.  I would say the majority of the time we were learning most of Pink Floyd's catalog, and at one point there was a band called that we called Eclipse that played a party at Scott Hartman's house.  Scott was a year older than Porter and I, and was the first guy to lend me a bunch of Beatle records so I could tape them.  I had just started really getting into the Beatles, but my parents only had the "Hey Jude" album and a couple of others...Hartman was the first guy I came across that had Revolver, Rubber Soul, Sgt. Peppers, etc.  I believe I played drums for Eclipse, while Porter and Hartman played guitar and I believe Jeff Porter (no relation to Scott) played bass.  We played, you guessed it, lots of Pink Floyd, including Echoes...without a keyboard!  It was fun.

During this time, the "Badiner Scene" started to absorb all of the above musicians, mainly because Fred Badiner was almost never home because he was always at work, and we could just jam all day and all night at the Badiner home.  For some reason the cops were rarely called, if I remember correctly (at least for noise complaints).  We started to call the whole scene The Spontaneous Underground, the name coming from the scene created in London during the early psychedelic days at the UFO Club, The Roundhouse, and other Swinging London scenes during '66-'67.  We all kind of saw ourselves as reliving/reviving the whole early psychedelic era from 20 years before.  Some of the tapes that I have from parties and shows from that period, tapes with Tiny Goldick, Scott Porter, Jeff Porter, Jeff Badiner, Kevin Tate, Joey Blinko, Scott Hartman and others are actually labeled "Spontaneous Underground".  I believe Scott Hartman called a band that he led a year or 2 later "Second Generation", kind of a next-gen of "SU".  Heady stuff, maaaan.

What Scott Porter and I would probably consider the highlight of this whole "era" was the legendary week long party at Scott Porter's parent's house some time in 1984.  Scott's parents were taking a rare vacation, and left Scott home by himself for the entire week.  Opportunities like this do not happen often for high school kid musicians...a week of jamming at someone's house with no parents!  Wow!  We set up all of the equipment in their family room, and left it set up the entire week.  I only remember being there 1 or 2 times, but I know that Scott had friends over from work almost every night (he worked at Bill Knapp's part time).  The main thing I do remember is what was to be the 2nd to last night before his parents were to come home.  There were not a lot of people there, just us musicians and probably 5-10 other guys that Scott knew from school and from Bill Knapp's.  We were jamming as usual in the family room and some much older guys came in, apparently friends of friends from Scott's work.  One guy was named Ed Wehunt, a friendly guy who played guitar and sang a bit, and another guy who introduced himself as Slash.  He was in a band called Slash Wildly, a bluesy/Doorsy/rockin type band I guess.  His name was Tom Henry, the same Tom Henry that has fronted the local blues establishment that is the Brown Street Breakdown.  Even back then Tom could play the harp very well, and it was fun having some new musicians show up and help lead the jams into different directions.  I have a tape from that night, I know we played a really, really awful version of Tom Petty's "Breakdown".  

The story gets better...I believe I stayed the night that night, and we decided the next morning/afternoon to try to do some "serious" recording before it was "too late".  I think someone may have brought over a decent cassette deck that had 2 mics plugged into it, and we a concentrated effort to not "jam", and pretend we were in the studio making a "real" recording.  I can't remember what we did, I don't think I still have that tape...but I'm sure Pink Floyd dominated it.  Anyway, as the day went on the few stragglers that stayed the night were leaving...I can't remember who was actually still in the house other than Scott and myself, when suddenly something very baaaad happened.  Scott's mom and dad pulled up in the driveway, a FULL DAY EARLIER than what we were expecting.  There were still beer/soda cans, fast food garbage, people's cigarette butts and burn holes to get rid of, and all of that equipment and cables strung all over the family room to dispose of.  We were Caught Red Handed.  They walked in, and I can still see that utterly appalled look on Scott's mom's face.  I think Scott managed to get into the basement and get a HUGE garbage bag full of cans and garbage out to the trunk of his mammoth 1970s Impala before they saw them, but if I remember correctly his dad found them before he could take them and dump them somewhere.  Scott was truly Busted.  I'm sure he would agree that it was all worth it though!  We're going to have to find that tape and put some of the links up here to download.

My tardiness at Northmont was getting pretty serious...especially since it was very common for people to just skip the first half of the day entirely, and sign in before 5th period just to avoid being marked as "absent".  So one fateful day in January, 1985, I was called down to the office where vice principal Krukenberg said it was time to notify my parents that I had been tardy so many times.  My heart sank, because I knew he was going to ask for my phone number.  I said, "gulp, it's 293...," and he said, "293?!?!".  Numbers in Englewood all began with 89x, so he knew at that moment that we were no longer living in the Northmont district, and thus had to stop going there.  I was upset about having to switch high schools mid way through my senior year, leaving all of the people I had grown up with for just about all of my entire childhood.  However, it turned out to be one of the best things that's ever happened to me.

To be continued...