Guitar

Violin first — Westside Youth Orchestra

First instrument was violin, in Westside Youth Orchestra. First or second chair. Me and Rowan were the two proteges. Brief in retrospect, but I wasn't dabbling — I was at the top of the section. Then I decided guitar was cooler and switched.

Gear

First guitar was a Gibson SG reissue. Then I built a Hentor Sportscaster from the frame up — Alex Lifeson's long-running custom Strat-style build (the "Hentor Sportscaster" name is the cheeky in-joke he gave it). Building the same model from raw materials at that age was the move I wanted to make. Same instinct as everything else — study the masters, build the thing yourself, no shortcuts.

School of Rock — house band, then AllStars

Made the house band first — the in-house performing ensemble that played a rotation of regional venues. Then made the cut for SoR AllStars, the national touring program selected from the strongest players across SoR locations.

The AllStars tour got canceled by COVID. The cut was earned; the planned payoff never happened.

LA venues

The shows were booked through School of Rock — but the venues were the venues:

• The Roxy (Sunset Strip)
• The Troubadour (West Hollywood — Eagles, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor)
• The Mint
• Whisky a Go Go (Sunset Strip — The Doors, Van Halen, Mötley Crüe)

Not kid showcases. Real Sunset Strip and West Hollywood rooms. SoR was the booking pipeline; the playing was the real thing.

Whisky — full circle

My dad plays Whisky a Go Go now for Law Rocks, the charity org where lawyer-bands play real venues. I played that stage in the SoR house band; he plays it now. Same room, two generations.

COVID — producer phase

When the AllStars tour died with COVID, the music shifted into a producer phase. Recording, songwriting, sessions. Some of that work is still parked — to come back to once the AILedger chapter lands. Art happens after the foundation is built; same compounding logic I apply elsewhere.

Home anchor — "Over the Hills and Far Away"

Led Zeppelin, Houses of the Holy, 1973. Page's acoustic-into-electric build. The song that's home for me at the song-specific level — I could still play it after a year off the instrument. Songs you can play after that long away are the ones that lived in your hands.

The Zeppelin landing came down from my dad. Same lineage, two generations — same as the Whisky thread. The dear-to-me triad: Eagles, Led Zeppelin, Rush. The rooms the Sunset Strip / West Hollywood circuit produced are the rooms the bands I grew up listening to came up through. The Lifeson connection that pointed at the Hentor build is part of that same triad.

Walshopedia

Currently building walshopedia.com, a project dedicated to Joe Walsh, one of the most formative musical influences I have. What he taught me, past the riffs: you can be serious about your craft without being precious about yourself. The site is a slow, deliberate build. A real catalog of the man and the music, treated with the same mix of reverence and humor he always treated himself with. Still early. So far the only finished part is the 404 page, which reads HERE COME THE WAH-WAHS.

Where it is now

Was paused for about a year — but I picked the guitar back up about a week ago. The instrument and the parked producer sessions are both still here. AILedger gets most of the hours; the guitar's back in my hands.