Frequent Questions

Since September 1984. I started on acoustic three months before electric guitar and still do both. I played classical guitar for two years to get the Bachelors of Music in classical guitar but otherwise never had much interest in that, and tendonitis took that away.

Guitar, bass, drums, percussion, and piano.  In college I also briefly played violin, flute, and performed as a bass in the chorus (including at the Kennedy Center in D.C.).

Seven guitars: three electrics I built, two Alvarez 6-string acoustics, an Alvarez 12-string, and a Yamaha classical guitar.

Three basses: one Jackson bass (retired), an Alvarez acoustic, and a 5-string bass (which replaced the Jackson) to go with my son’s 7-string guitar, which I’ve been borrowing (and didn’t count in my guitar collection).

For pictures, including the construction of the newest one in stages, see the gear page.

Not currently. The Mid-Atlantic wasn’t supportive of local instrumental rock, so the live band disbanded in 2007. The Iron Maiden tribute band I did next struggled to get shows, too, and broke up by 2009. I haven’t performed since, and don’t expect to with the instrumentals again, but it’s possible for my metal band, Black Halo.

Pretty much, yes. It doesn’t affect my life much anymore. That said, I still play guitar only two days in a row before a day off so my arms get rest. But I lap swim an hour three times a week now and even tentatively resumed doing pushups in 2023, the first time since 1996!

At the time (2009), I was rehearsing a similar finger picking piece of mine, “Menagerie,” and needed something else to practice, so I relearned “Dee,” having not played it in 20 years, back when I wrote “Menagerie,” as it turns out. When I finally recorded mine, I decided to record “Dee”, too, just because I could.

I didn’t intend to release “Dee,” but during mixing I walked into the studio late one morning and the engineer had it blasting from the speakers. I didn’t recognize it at first and thought it sounded great and wondered who it was. At the same moment Jeff (the drummer) remarked, “I forgot you said you recorded this,” I realized what it was. That’s when I first thought to include it.

My performance is different from Randy’s in that he used two guitars with some harmony overdubs and I used one, a nylon string guitar. I also added rubato (a slowing down) in several places.

It’s a spoof on the myth of the phoenix, which is a bird made of fire that grew so hot it burned itself to ashes, and was then reborn. This is where the expression “rising from your ashes” comes from. Another name for the phoenix is “the firebird.” Since my guitar playing was once taken away by tendonitis and I regained it and “rose from my ashes,” this was an obvious symbol to reference.

Medieval and renaissance bards were musicians who played a lute and sometimes sang. A lute is similar enough to a guitar that it could be said that bards are predecessors of guitarists.  So we have a guitarist (“bard”) who was destroyed and then reborn like the firebird, so I changed one letter in a play on words to create The Firebard. Like a bad joke, I thought this was clever until I had to explain it a million times. Many people have never heard of the firebird OR phoenix, and never heard the word “bard” either.

No. Strangely, the Artist Relations guy at Peavey who gave me the endorsement also has that uncommon name.

No. I haven’t done it since August 1996 when I first got tendonitis, and don’t intend to. I can only do so much with my arms and have other priorities. I’m also more a creator than a performer and classical guitar was all the music of others.

Only a little for recordings as backing parts. I used to play heavily before tendonitis took this away. I had two years of private lessons at college (I was a piano minor) and this may have contributed to the injury. I miss doing it and wish I had the time and capacity from my arms to handle it regularly but don’t for now.

Yes, all performances of classical (nylon-stringed) guitar on either The Lost Art or Serenade of Strings are the guitar pictured on The Lost Art’s cover. It’s the only one I’ve owned and is also the one on which I did all of my classical guitar work for the degree. You could almost call it the “tendonitis guitar.”

Yes, it’s one of two steel-string acoustics used, mostly on the newer pieces that were written on it, by coincidence. Which steel string guitar was used on a song was determined solely by which had newer strings at the time. Both are by Alvarez and sound pretty much the same, though I tend to like the older, black one’s sound better while playing; I can’t tell which is which on recordings.

The albums were released on the same day because both were ready and to consolidate mixing, mastering, photography, artwork, website updates, manufacturing and distribution, licensing, and promotion. I also can’t play classical guitar anymore, making The Lost Art a kind of bonus disc, not one I’d release on it’s own because that would give the impression of not only newness (it was recorded in 1995) but continued releases along those lines. It’s a “one-off” album.

The Lost Art came about when I recorded Serenade of Strings in 2009 and wanted to include my original “Fantasia Etude,” recorded in 1995 with 18 other classical pieces. I wasn’t sure of the recording quality, but my mixing engineer thought well of it, so I decided to release the other 18 pieces together as The Lost Art.

You might notice that on the back of The Lost Art, the sheet music from “Fantasia Etude” is visible even though the song itself is not on that album, but on Serenade of Strings. Call it “the ghost” of the missing etude that was also recorded with those pieces. This artwork fit the classical guitar album better.

The logo was designed for my career but that is generally hard rock/metal. It didn’t seem appropriate on the softer acoustic guitar and classical guitar albums and might give the wrong impression of what kind of music is on those discs, especially to people unfamiliar with my music.