Motivated by my favorite bands Rush, Van Halen and Led Zeppelin, I took up the drums at age 13. I started taking lessons and was immediately hooked on playing music, jamming with my friends after school and drumming along to my favorite songs. My drum teacher introduced me to the rudiments and jazz, and I developed musically and became a decent - but by no means great - drummer.

I played throughout college but never really went full-on until I graduated and decided I wanted to get more serious and put together a band. Around that time, I was living in San Francisco with one of my best friends and jamming buddies from growing up in Atlanta, and he had an acoustic guitar. I taught myself a few chords and immediately songs started coming out of me even though I could barely play the instrument. I would say that was the moment that I knew I wanted to make music on a serious level.

I had joined a local band on drums and was beginning to get more serious with them, playing bars around the Bay Area and Northern California as well as doing a few tours of Colorado. I spent most of my time during those years playing guitar five to six hours a day and constantly writing songs. The guitar and songwriting came to me much more naturally than the drums, and once I had gotten rhythm guitar up and running, I bought some scale books and started working on lead guitar trying to find the sounds of my heroes: Mark Knopfler, Jerry Garcia and David Gilmour.

After five years of constant practice, I was ready to switch to playing guitar and singing my songs in the bands I was in instead of playing drums, so I left the band I was in and started Seconds On End, where I learned to play live and in studio as well as produce and engineer records.

Photo courtesy of Andrew Thomases

My father was always very into classic rock when I was younger. He constantly had the radio on or albums on the turntable (yes, vinyl back then in the 70s). He got me hooked on The Beatles at a young age, but it was when he took me to see Beatlemania on Broadway when I realized I wanted to be like Paul McCartney.

After that show – maybe even on the drive home – I asked my dad if I could have his old bass guitar. He gave it to me, but I didn’t even have an amplifier. I figured out a way to plug it into our home stereo and I remember almost blowing out the speakers. I tried my hardest to teach myself, but, alas, I had no idea what I was doing.

Coincidentally, that summer I was headed off to summer camp for eight weeks. I took the bass guitar with me, but I didn’t have any specific plans to take lessons or even play. One of my friends, however, was excited to try out for the camp’s rock band as a lead singer. He came back all excited that he got the gig, but he said that the camp had a shortage of bass players. He had mentioned me to the head of the rock shop, but said I didn’t know how to play.

For as long as I can remember, I've been fascinated with the electric guitar. I remember my Grade 1 teacher telling me "no more making guitars" in art class. I'd use a ruler for the neck and whatever I could for the body and the head. After being told no more guitars, I literally made another guitar and tried to pass it off as an ax. I remember this as if it were yesterday. I can't remember what I ate for lunch, but I remember things like this. My parents caught onto my interest in music, but insisted I do a year of piano before trying guitar. After the year of piano was over, I no longer cared to play an instrument. I hated it. But only temporarily. I think I was only 5 or 6 years old, so it was hard to concentrate.

The moment I knew I wanted to be on stage for real wasn't until some years later. Again, I remember this as if it were yesterday. We were watching a music awards show on TV as a family and a band came on. The singer was beating his guitar like it owed him money, and every word he sang into the mic was accompanied with a shower of spit. I watched and listened in awe. I had never heard anything like it. I looked at my older sister and said, "Who is this?" She said, "Some band called Green Day." That was the moment I knew. I was in grade 6.

Before discovering Green Day, I was listening to the stuff passed down from my older sister, and what my parents were into. My parents used to blare Fleetwood Mac, Dire Straits and Michael Jackson. ALL FANTASTIC. My sister was blaring Guns N' Roses, The Doors, Metallica and Portishead. ALL FANTASTIC. The thing these all had in common to me, though, was that their musicianship was at a level that felt unachievable. There was no way I could even dream of being able to play the guitar riffs I was hearing from Metallica, Guns N' Roses and Dire Straits. But Green Day changed all of that. It was my introduction to punk rock, and I was sold.

On my 14th birthday, my mom bought me my first guitar. It was an acoustic, with action so high you could barely play a note, but it was a start. I banged away on that thing for the summer and then I decided I wanted an electric guitar. The only thing I had of any value was the dirt bike I had cut lawns for three summers to buy. I sold it and used the money to buy a Yamaha electric guitar with a 10 watt amp. I also bought a Nirvana Nevermind TAB book. This book taught me the most important thing you need to know when starting out: the power chord. It all snowballed from there. This was at the beginning of grade 8. I spent months in my room pretending to be Billie Joe Armstrong, and by the end of that school year, I had a band that played in the talent show. We played "Going To Pasalacqua" by Green Day. From what I remember, it didn't suck. Although I'm not 100% sure. Ha.

After I sold my dirt bike for a guitar, my best friend Luke (having no one left to ride with) sold his dirt bike too, and bought a drum kit. He and I have been playing music together ever since. You'll be able to hear him playing on some of my yet-to-be-released material. We started out as a punk band, and as we became more comfortable with our instruments, the music evolved. We started listening to some heavier stuff like Minor Threat and eventually Slayer. As we inched through high school, we started sounding more and more like a hardcore band. As well as writing original material, we were covering Minor Threat, Strife and One King Down. We had a pretty cool little scene happening in our high school with us and a few other bands renting out halls and putting on shows. Besides our hardcore band, there was a funk band, a punk band and a straight rock band that sounded like Tool and Smashing Pumpkins. In between each band, there would be a different DJ spinning records. It wasn’t until years later that I realized what a unique experience we’d created.

By the time high school was done, Luke’s brother, Josh, had joined the band and he started singing the majority of the leads while I focused on lead guitar and singing harmonies. He was Layne and I was Jerry. We were going to be the next Alice In Chains. We spent over a decade writing and recording music together. We toured Canada, recorded a demo in Los Angeles and shared the stage with some of our heroes. While this was happening, I was building a career as a cover artist playing bars, restaurants and whatnot. This seemed like the best way for me to pay the rent while pursuing our goals. Our band eventually called it a day, but we all still hang out together regularly.

This brings us to today. Ta da!

Thanks for reading,
Grant

“Alright,” he chuckled. “Let’s go to work.”

Those were the words uttered out of my dad’s mouth after he and his brothers finished a 15-minute-long laughing session about a very specific three seconds in time. Those three seconds happened to be about a man’s reaction when he heard the news that he is the father on The Jerry Springer Show.

I was about 5 or 6 years old at the time, and didn’t quite understand what was going on. All I knew is that it was funny; really fucking funny.

“Fucking” was a word I learned from them; and they would always have a big smile on their face and tears from laughter in their eyes when they said it, so I assumed it must be a good word. I mean, anyone that exudes that much happiness must be using a good word, right?

Anyway, they listened to my father, collected themselves and made their way out of the little room towards a door that said “STAGE ENTRANCE”.

I watched the show from backstage with my mom, who for some reason pursed her lips more and more every time they said the new word I learned. I could tell they were having fun; not the kind of fun they were having backstage with Jerry Springer, but a different kind of fun. I saw that it meant something to them. Unfortunately, like all good things, the show eventually came to an end. I was hooked. The next thing I knew, I was begging to go to any and every show. I loved seeing live music. I didn’t care what it was; The Utah Symphony, concerts in the park, a man playing the cello on the sidewalk… it didn’t matter, it was pure bliss!

What was even more blissful was my first violin lesson when I was 4 years old. It felt like my birthday and Christmas morning put into one. While little league baseball and art classes were fun, nothing compared to getting a chance to actually learn a musical instrument. I fell in love with the violin during the symphony’s performance of The Nutcracker. It was part of something called The Lollipop Series which was a concert that The Utah Symphony put on once a month for kids to introduce them to classical music. There was even an instrument “petting zoo” where kids got to play the instruments. I could’ve spent hours, probably even days there if I had the chance. I quickly learned that there was something even better than listening to music; creating it! If I wasn’t practicing the violin I was making up melodies on a toy keyboard or making my own recordings. My recording process at that age was pretty simple. The first step was to find my mother’s portable CD player (a boombox of sorts). The second step was to break out the Sesame Street-themed cassette player/recorder. Once you started playing the CD and pushed record on the Sesame Street rig, it was go time. I sang for hours. But I wanted to harmonize, and this was an issue since I couldn’t harmonize with myself when recording a cassette. What I could do though was grab a toy voice processor that came with a Halloween costume. It was cheap and made of plastic, but to me it was a godsend. It had the option of either amplifying my own voice, making it deeper, or “alien” which multiplied my voice into three very interesting sounding voices. The alien option was my favorite.

As I grew up, I expanded my palate by taking voice lessons, production classes, trumpet lessons and eventually studied music in college. It was pretty much my only passion. I didn’t care much for sports or math. Science wasn’t my best subject, and history was boring. But music… music was everything to me!

In a recent discussion with my mother, she told me she used to put headphones on her belly when she was pregnant with me and play my father’s music. Perhaps this is where it started. Perhaps I fell in love with music before I was even born. While I do understand now what my dad meant when he said “work” all those years ago, the passion still burns deep, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I knew I wanted to make music since I was around nine years old. I remember a good friend of my parents being a musician. He played the piano almost effortlessly. We went to one of his concerts and after seeing him play I knew I wanted to be just like him.

In 2000 I was eight years old. My dad was about to take me to one of my baseball games (for which I was probably more keyed up than any little kid should be) in his Ford F-150 and he put in a silver colored CD with four letters on the front: K-I-S-S. I know this band brings up certain feelings for a lot of listeners, but keep in mind - I don't care. I remember him saying that I was about to hear his favorite band from when he was my age, so naturally my ears perked up.

What happened next literally changed the course of my life. It took me from a little kid obsessed with baseball to a little kid obsessed with baseball and music. The opening guitar notes of "Detroit Rock City" invaded my ear drums. The seven hits to the snare just before the rest of the band exploded in blissful unison pulled me to the edge of my seat. The opening vocal line from Paul Stanley was the nail in the coffin in which my life before rock and roll was buried.

I literally felt like I was being sucked into the radio. My stomach was buzzing, my eyes were glued to the front console as if the band members were going to jump out of the speakers and into the truck cab. I completely forgot about playing baseball that night. After that night, I listened to that CD (which happened to be KISS' greatest hits) over and over again. I listened intently to the guitar solos, the drum fills and the delicious vocal hooks. It was the first time I remember being able to pick out each individual instrument.

It was also the first time I recall knowing what was happening within a song, and where it might go next. I felt as if I had jumped headfirst into a white water river where I couldn't drown; the further I dove in, the more I wanted it. Then I got a look at the band members themselves. They were like superheroes. They were larger than life. They were literally huge (three out of four band members were over six feet tall) and they wore lifted shoes. They lived what they sang about. They were angry, they were free and they were freaking good at what they did. They made it look easy.

I decided that I had to be part of whatever they were doing. I had to learn how to make those noises. I had to learn how to do what they did. I didn't have any interest in wearing the makeup, but I wanted the swagger. I wanted the skill. That was the moment I knew I had to make music.