At the age of ten or eleven, I gave up my career path as a superhero when I busted my nose trying to crash through the living room wall and decided that I wanted to play music.

For me, it started early. The house was always full of music. My mom listened to Harry Belafonte, Elvis and everything in between. I had a knack for pounding rhythms and keeping time with the music she listened to. Drums fascinated me.

Then I saw the Beatles' Hard Day's Night movie...that was it for me. I HAD to get some drums, but how? I bought an old cymbal at the local music store and made a stand out of a curtain rod (yeah, we were poor) and fastened it to an old chair with a foam pad on it. In the meantime, I started mowing lawns and saving my money.

Then, one summer night, my grandmother had a large party in the basement of her house and there was a small local jazz trio there. The drummer, an older African-American gentleman, Mr. James Evans, could tell I was mesmerized watching him all night. I sat on the floor near him and he'd look over at me and smile or wink when he played something complicated, as if to show me how much fun he was having.

At the end of the night, he asked my grandmother if he could leave his drums there for a couple days so I could play on them. She said yes, and my drumming career started about 6 the next morning! When the family heard me play, they all said it sounded like I was born to play the drums, so my Granny took my lawn mowing money and added some of her own to it, and bought my first kit, a shiny 4-piece set of red sparkle Apollo drums. Mr. Evans probably never realized what he started that night.

I also play guitar fairly well. Since my father was already a guitar player, he passed down his old arch-top guitar that made my fingers bleed, but my determination won out and after many hours of practice and lots of equipment upgrades, I wound up playing gigs with both drums and guitar by the age of sixteen.