MUSIC: I couldn't tell you exactly when I set my sights on becoming a rock star, but it can all be traced back to my 15th birthday party. Someone gave me Van Halen's "Diver Down," and we played it as I opene (...)

When did you realise that making music could be a way of life for you?

Whohub

I couldn't tell you exactly when I set my sights on becoming a rock star, but it can all be traced back to my 15th birthday party. Someone gave me Van Halen's "Diver Down," and we played it as I opened other gifts. When "Cathedral" came on, I fell completely and utterly in love, and what had been a flirtation with music until then ignited into passion. In retrospect, this was The First Revelation.

The passion never died, but the desire to be a rock star went away not long after college. For about a decade, music was a very exciting hobby, with which I wanted to do more, but couldn't figure out how.

In mid-to-late 2006, I went on several road trips, to various improv festivals around the continent, with The Remainders, a musical improv troupe in which I was the accompanist. During those trips, I had The Second Revelation: a very acute sense that I had missed out on something; that the life of a touring musician could be very fulfilling to me.

To date, I am not yet a professional musician, but I would say that music has been "a way of life" at least since The Second Revelation.

This year (2012) has been one of great emotional upheaval and transformation. At the end of a doomed romance, I decided to write an album, and decided that it should be classic Soul even though I had never really listened to the genre before. I spent October writing and recording, and November mixing, mastering, and releasing, and for those two months it was almost all I thought about -- LITERALLY a way of life. This album also taught me a lot about connecting my voice to my emotions in ways I never had before. I suspect that I will look back on this time as The Third Revelation.