My Origin Story
I still remember the first day I ever picked a guitar up and played something on it, over 15 years ago. It was a song from a car commercial that featured a mad-scientist looking character in a lab coat, playing with 6 different transmission shifters to play a few rumbling notes which I would later discover was the super cliche “Smoke On the Water” by Deep Purple.
I don’t know what prompted me to pick up the dusty old guitar sitting in my brother’s room during a school project, but the moment I did, and I played those notes (poorly, albeit) I came back to life.
In that moment, I was transformed — from a kid so shy that my 8th grade Social Studies class forced me to stand in front of the room just to say my name, to a rock star (not really).
Even though I wasn’t a rock star, I suddenly had something that was driving me, something that I was living for. I lived for opportunities to play that guitar, and to experience music in any capacity I could for years to come.
But let’s be clear, I definitely wanted to be a rock star. Particularly, I wanted to create a band called “The Anarchy Project 101” (TAP 101 for short) and I had a grandiose vision of creating a 101 minute song. Also, I had completely planned out the audition process for new band members before I even knew 5 chords on the guitar. We even had a marketing plan — Step 1: Win our High School Battle of the bands, Step 2: International Superstardom.
Internally, I was experiencing a huge shift, trying to find my identity in the swarm of 4,000 students as I transitioned to high school. Like many other introverts, huge crowds are not my strong suit. During this time, I leaned into music to be my identity. I certainly wasn’t an athlete, I wasn’t a braniac, and I refused to be a nobody.
Well, it worked pretty well to get me through high school. I became “the guy with a guitar”. The highlight of my high school “music career” was performing “Your Body Is A Wonderland” for a heavy set Mormon girl as part of my choir audition to be a ‘singing valentine’ (think traveling troubadour traversing the hallways during school). I don’t think I fully understood the irony of that situation, however my choir teacher was unamused, and firmly vetoed my song choice. I ended up getting banned from participating in singing valentine’s ever again (good times). My reputation as the guy with the guitar however, was solidified.
Everything was great, and I knew who I was — that is, until I made the dumbest mistake any aspiring musician can make. I went to music school. From the first week at Berklee College of Music, I was in an identity crisis. Everyone was the guy or girl with the guitar (or something way, cooler and more hipster). Not only that, these were kids who had released albums, EPs, and played shows around the country. I hadn’t done any of that stuff. I was lost. Very, very lost. Like, I applied to business school, lost. It was during this time that I would reflect on the previous 5 years of my life as a musician, and it was also during this time that the confidence music gave me oscillated between bravado and apprehension. I could no longer lean on the identity I had made for myself.
I took whatever gigs I could, including a stint performing at an amusement park, open mics, and busking. But the thing that stood out the most, that I did the least of, was teaching private lessons. I signed up for a company that provided instructors with students, and started going to people’s houses to teach voice and guitar. Somehow in those moments I experienced a clarity that I had been lacking. There was some strange peace in those moments.
I still remember one day, sitting on the porch of a house in a college town that I was sharing with 4 other people (I miss $320 rent) , a lady who had heard me playing guitar approached me.
“There’s a music school down the road that needs a Ukulele teacher”.
I replied “Oh, cool! I’ll check it out.”
I never did. She followed up with me a couple of weeks later. “I don’t know how to play the Ukulele”, I said.
The truth was, I didn’t care about it. It wasn’t my identity. I did, however, order my first Uke later. To me, it was just a small guitar that couldn’t do nearly as much, and wasn’t nearly as exciting.
Well, 7 years passed in the blink of an eye (I checked my Amazon order history to be sure). I spent 3 of those years performing on cruise ships ad nauseam, 2 of them finishing school, and 1 desperately trying to be a successful independent artist. But the most impactful year I had was taking my first job teaching guitar at a school for students with learning disabilities. Once again, this teaching thing was poking out at me. I was getting worn on performing, and the fates aligned when one day, while performing on a ship, walked in a stunning girl, who happened to be a 4th grade teacher. We talked deeply about our goals and aspirations aboard the Carnival Freedom, and 2 days later she was gone.
After that day I was completely restless, and I had to devise a plan to see her again. Somehow, I convinced her to fly up and see me. We got 3 solid hours together, and I had to get back on board a ship. From that day, she had my heart. There would be several other 3 or 4 hour dates, followed by weeks of percolating on odd jobs I could take to escape “ship life”.
In the end, I left ships without a plan, but with a strong desire to be with this girl. I took a door to door sales job, and then I made a lateral move to signing people up for DirecTV in Wal Mart. Somehow, neither of those panned out as careers for me. But then, this organization I had applied to reached out. FineArtsMatter, a non-profit that brought music programs to school without them, needed an instructor to fill in. Well, I took the job and started driving 90 minutes to teach for 45. But something about it brought life out in me. It was the first time I was working with groups of more than 10 kids at a time. I was hooked.
Oh and that girl, Danielle, she started me on the application process to teach music full time at an elementary school the following year. I was completely in over my head. Even with groups of 5 kids, there were 2 of them that would be crawling on tables, one crying, and 2 very confused. But I knew this was more than a job, it was a mission. It might take teaching 100 kids to find 2 that would respond the way I would to music, but it would be worth it to see the transformation it could make in their lives.
In August 2017, I dove head first into teaching. I now was working with 6 different groups every day, with 20+ students at a time, and nothing but enthusiasm and grand ideas of the impact I would make. One thing I can say is I have incredible respect for teachers after becoming one. I always resented my teachers growing up, and now I understand so much about why they were the way that they were. I see caring where I once saw malice, and I see passion where I once saw frustration.
I would love if there were a program when people from other professions could step into the classroom for a day and teach kids. There is absolutely nothing like it in the world. To teach, you have to be fully present, fully engaged, and completely enthusiastic about your product. Wait, we’re talking about teaching, not sales right? Turns out, teaching is sales. To be an effective teacher, you must sell your students that what you are telling them about will impact their lives, it is relevant and important to them now, and will continue to be. Many will not buy from you, but the few that do, will be changed forever, and so will you.
Turns out, those door-to-door sales did more for me as a teacher than my music school education ever could have. Granted, I still have a lot to learn about different methods and ways of helping kids step into the experience of music, and I am thankful for teachers with years of experience that have become role models for me, but through the simple sharing of the ideas I am passionate about, we have created a community of budding musicians and enthusiasts.
I still teach from 8 AM — 3PM daily, and then I head to our studio, where Danielle and I get to teach together. But we do more than teach, we create an experience to sell kids on the importance of personal growth in their lives. We use music as an avenue for that. It’s an amazing avenue, because it teaches you about mastery, about autonomy, and about following through. In the end, music does the teaching, we just have to focus on selling the idea over and over again, encouraging students and building their confidence along the way.
And that confidence has resulted in kids growing, healing, and having new experiences. We put everything into one instrument, the Ukulele, and we focus on that moment, the same moment I had while playing “Smoke on the Water”. In fact, we teach that song, and students light up when they learn it the same way that I did. To be able to share that moment is really what I always wanted as a musician. While I thought that I had to be a rock star to do that, it turns out that would have actually prevented me from having the opportunity to reach people in that way.
From all of these experiences, what I’ve realized is that the greatest thing to share about music is not how great of a performer, guitar player, or songwriter I am. There are many great ones out there to listen to and go see. What I want is to cultivate appreciation and enthusiasm for the art of music and the science of self-motivated deliberate practice in students that lasts them their whole lives, so that when they are lost they have somewhere to turn. So that when they don’t know who they are, they can find themselves. So that they can have something to teach someone else, something to share, so they can express the song in their hearts. Through teaching them, I’ve become a completely different person. I’m still very self-centered as most humans are, but I’ve learned to step out of myself to reach them, to hopefully inspire the 2 out of 100 who really care, and to encourage them along the way.
That’s my origin story, and it was probably a pretty bad retelling of it. But I’ll keep telling it, and eventually I’ll figure out how to convey the depth of feeling that I have, and give you that feeling to. Or maybe, if you’ve never done it before, you can pick up an old guitar, or a new Ukulele, and play “Smoke On the Water”, and you’ll know what I’m talking about.
