I will sing till the walls come tumbling down...
Beginnings
I’ve sung for as long as I can remember. Choirs, sitting in church, the usual stuff. Musically I tried piano, trumpet, xylophone… yes, xylophone… but it wasn’t until I bought this beauty from a friend for 50 bucks when I was 14 that my life changed forever. The first song I learned how to play was Feliz Navidad in the key of F from my mom’s Christmas book. The second song I learned how to play, well, I wrote. It’s a really bad song, but my songwriting journey began pretty quickly.
Rock
One winter Saturday in 1993 Ed and I walked up to Mike’s house. They were in a rock band together. I knew who Mike was but never hung out with him. They started jamming in his basement and I started singing some stuff, and they were like “Dude, join our band!” and I was like “Dude, sure thing!” Something along those lines. If you asked me where I learned how to lead worship, collaborate, work with a team, create an engaging atmosphere for others, it was in the 7 years I played with my friends in Bungi Orange. It set the stage for my career as a worship pastor.
Since then music has taken different forms with different groups. Outside of my weekly worship leading I wrote more original stuff with Five Mile Fall and Kavalier, along with my solo projects. These days I enjoy doing cover shows which is super fun. One of the best parts has been playing with so many talented people over the years. There are too many to name. I know you didn’t click on this page to READ about my music journey… but to LISTEN to it. See below as some of the links will take you to different places along the way. Scroll down to the bottom if you’d like to start from the beginning.
Disclaimer: Three of these projects are legitimate studio recordings… the rest are either self recorded or live tracks.
Recent solo tracks
Here are a few things I recorded myself or with friends over the last few years. September is one of my favorite songs that we recorded just after high school. I revamped it for it’s 25th anniversary.
Kids
Some tunes I wrote for my kids. Each song style and content reflects their unique personalities. The recordings are rough. I’ll replace them with real ones soon.
Kavalier
Another life transition moved us back down towards the Philadelphia area to a house in King of Prussia. We decided to trick-or-treat in our neighborhood of our new house before we even went to settlement . We met a ton of awesome families that night with kids our kid's’ ages. The additional bonus, I found out my neighbor Geoff across the street was a bass player and just built a new garage with a room upstairs he planned to use as a jam room. Talk about the perfect place. So Geoff and I started jamming and invited my friend Zach to join us. We went through a few roster changes and then Covid hit, so we didn’t get too much off the ground. Here’s are some songs we wrote and a clip of our show at Wayne Porchfest with the talented Laura Orr on vocals with me.
Five Mile Fall
After moving back from Chicago I got together with some of the guys on the worship team at Calvary Souderton. My super talented buddy Justin Hange and I split the lead vocals which was really fun. I feel like I grew a ton as a guitarist in these years without the full load of singing. My affinity and investment in pedals and building pedal boards grew for sure. We recorded “Fire to the Fuse” around 2010. We opened for BarlowGirl and we played at Musikfest in Bethlehem, PA as well. Years later we revamped and moved toward more of a cover band. Below are a few tracks recorded by master audio tech Jordan Kijak at our annual show at Jesse’s BBQ in Souderton.
City of God
If I were to answer the question what is the most “real” thing I’ve done to date, it would probably be recording this album in 2008. It was recorded and produced by Chis Sernel who has since gone on to become a Grammy nominated producer and has written and produced for artists such as J-Lo, Cee Lo Green, and Weezer. This was a culmination of my time at Park Community Church and these songs were written out of their vision to “renew the city.” The song “In Jesus Name” is one of the my favorite songs I’ve written and still use in congregational worship today.
Seasons Project
I was reading a few books from the author John Eldridge in my early 20’s that had a great impact on me. One of them talked about this concept of God writing a story through our lives. It seems like a simple thing, but it really resonated with me. It caused me to look back on some of those benchmark times in life up to that point. Some songs started coming from it and I decided to put together a kind of autobiography in song. I sat down with Mike Birchard and recorded some rough acoustic tracks. I really like the last song “In the End.” It captures the heart of the idea.
Bungi Orange
This is where it all started. We played together through high school but it wasn’t until just afterward and the addition of our drummer, Trever Terranova, that we really started to find our sound. He brought us to the next level and we began playing around the city. We released “The Man in the Tree” in ‘97. One of the tracks I love on this album is “Grendle’s Cave.” We would probably all say that our crowning moment was playing on the local stage at The Warped tour in 1999. You can check that out below.