I Posted this in the thread about Hammond Organs where a lot of the long time musicians were posting and this thought came to me. Donny suggested i start a new thread for this so here it is. Hope to hear from many of you that have been through the wars as gigging musicians.

Bebop Here,
I don't have anything to add to this discussion about Hammond Organs, because it would just be more of the same with my built in prejudices from gigging for more years then a lot of musicians have yet lived.
Here is what I would like to say. I really enjoyed this discussion and I am sure most who read it did.
Here is what I would like to see.
I would love to read the bio's of all the long time musicians that have been through the wars. We have so much in common and yet we are all so different because even though we lived through the same eras, we all have different life experiences. I would love to read the bios of those who posted in this thread and all the other representative musicians in this forum.
What say y'all. Let's just do it. Who would start?
Bebop

Looks like I'm first ! ok here goes...

Noel Jay Honey....Bio

From the age of 6 years old I would stay with a relative who had an old Harmonium, I was taught a few chords to amuse myself and took to playing it fairly well in a short time, the Harmonium was quickly replaced by a Lowery Holiday organ and after 2 years of learning on that I was then sent off to learn piano, the piano training continued for 7 years, at the age of 15 I became interested in Hammond organs and by chance a local bar let me play their Hammond T202 on Saturday mornings, after 6 months I was asked to play during weekend opening hours for a small fee, at age 17 I was approached by an agent to play Hammond T500 in a large seaside complex in Southsea, UK which continued for 2 years when I was then offered a position as organist in a travelling circus which I toured with for 3 years.



On making enough money touring I returned to my home town and bought a Rhodes 73, a
Solina String Machine, Clavinet D6 and a Korg 700s and became a freelance keyboardist
doing sessions and gigs around the south coast. I just about covered every type of gig back then, playing a piano concert one night then a rock band gig the next, a reggae band the next night, a Beatles tribute band finishing it off with playing sing-along's in a rest home.

I started doing a bit of teaching too and got introduced to the Yamaha electone completion which I entered and went all the way through to the UK finals coming 5th overall, also in the same year I got voted best keyboardist in my home town of Portsmouth UK. My workload flourished but female intervention saw me teaching more and dropping gigs to just 2 or 3 a
month for a few years, my interest suddenly flared up when I encountered a Roland Pro E
arranger and the possibilities of arrangers to replace larger bands and went on to gig in duo's using a succession of arrangers and formed a successful Dinner Dance trio which has been going for 16 years now currently using a Yamaha S900 and a Roland FP4 piano.



Wanting to hone my jazz skills recently I enrolled in a College course to study improvistion
and jazz theory, I now have more jazz gigs than anything else and am slowly making a name
for myself locally as a jazz pianist with a full diary and have just landed a top jazz gig in
October at the Carlton Intercontinental Hotel in Cannes, France...

Music has taken me many places and I'm still as enthusiatic about playing as I when I first encountered the Harmonium...ok must go now as have to rehearse for tonights jazz gig.

Rgds

Noel J


[This message has been edited by pasadoble (edited 04-24-2010).]

Don't know if it counts as long-time or not, but it's been a long time for my age. I've been playing professionally for 27 years, and I turn 32 tomorrow.

It all started with ice cream buckets and tin pie plates. That was my first drum kit. Worked out well, because my dad loved dessert and I loved banging on the containers the dessert was in. Even then, apparently my dad and sisters were paying attention to the noise I was making, because they entrusted me to be the drummer for the family band at age 5.

My dad had a country Gospel band that toured churches, festivals, county and state fairs, in the dakotas and surrounding states. It was he, my sisters, and a couple local guys. Gradually, it became totally a family band, when my sister learned to do left hand bass, and I started playing drums. I can just about imagine how the studio engineer felt when he booked a family band to come in and record a 10 song album, and what he got was 15 year old keyboard/piano players and a 5 year old drummer.

This is one of the tracks from that album. www.roryhoffman.com/little.mp3

We did on average 1 album a year for the next 5 years. We were weekend warriors as it were, with me and my sisters in school and dad having a ranch to run. Sometimes during the summers we would go out for slightly extended periods.

Over the years I was teaching myself to play other instruments, and as my younger brother started taking up an interest in drums, I moved on to playing lead guitar, banjo, harmonica, sax, some fiddle.

My other influence groing up apart from country and gospel music was old-time polka and waltz music. That was a big deal with my granpa, great uncles and some other friends of my parents.
My dad bought some recording equipment for us to use at home, and I decided I wanted to learn to use it. So, at age 12, I created a tape (for my grandpa) of me playing a bunch of the polkas and waltzes that I always played with him. I did all the instruments, recording, mixing, myself. Grandpa started showing friends, who started wanting copies. Eventually a radio station up in North Dakota which did a Sunday afternoon polka show got wind of it and asked for a copy. At which point a lot of people wanted copies. Then a record store in Dickenson North Dakota asked me if I might want to put a few copies in his store to sell. So at night when I was home doing homework, I was making copies of my old-time cassette to put in the store.

In junior high and High school I started taking up an interest in jazz. Everyone else in my family thought I'd lost it. Jazz chords just made no sense to anybody...except me. I really traced the jazz heritage. At first, I didn't really like anything but old Dixieland music, because it sort of reminded me of sophisticated polkas, what with the horns and banjos. Then I really latched onto the bigband swing stuff, and later kept progressing as my brain wrapped around this whole jazz experience.

In college I studied piano and saxophone. I lasted 2 years. I was set to transfer from a local school in SD to North Texas to get a jazz studies degree, but fate had other plans.
Over the summer of 1999, I attended the Christian Artist in the Rockies Seminar. It's a national event with workshops, clinics, and competitions. I entered the piano competition, the general instrumental competition with guitar, and a Christian rock band I was playing with from college at the time also entered.
The rock band took 4th in the overall band competition, I took second in piano, and grand champion instrumentalist with guitar.
Those accomplishments got me some notice, and I met someone who wanted to help me produce a record in NASHVILLE! WOW!

in 2001 I made my first trip to Nashville to record Blind Faith, a guitar and piano instrumental CD with a lot of Nashville's finest session guys backing me up. I soaked up everything I could absorb..
One of the people who was largely responsible for helping me fund that project decided we should try to build a studio ourselves back in South Dakota.
And Depot Music was formed.
in 2003 I self-produced my second record, "Fishin'", and played a lot of the instruments myself and hired friends and aquaintances from across North and South Dakota to do instruments I couldn't or didn't want to play. That's the thing with the Dakotas, you have to cover a lot of territory to find enough REALLY SKILLED musicians to do a top-shelf project.

I stayed with Depot music until 2008. During that time I won Musician of the Year twice with the Christian Country Music Association, got to perform on the Ryman stage, appeared on GAC tv, toured the country from Cali to New York to Texas. And produced a few records for other clients in our studio.

in 2008 I decided I had to make the move to Nashville once and for all and see how it would work out. Kind of got tired of being the big fish and needed to test my mettle with the best. And that's what I'm doing. I'm not turnig the world upside down, but I'm earning a living, playing with a few swing and country bands, doing the occasional sessionn, and just finding my way. I'm about at my 2 year anniversary here now and I'm loving it tremendously.

So, there it is, as best as I can condense the major points.
Rory

Thank you Noel and Rory. this is exactly what I had hoped for. It is really exciting to read your bios and even recognize the similiarities to our own. You just made my day and it is only 10 AM. Thank you so much.
I do hope that every one of you will put up your bio here for us to reflect against and for the younger musicians to learn from and dream about. Thank you all in advance.
Bill the Bebop

Happy Birthday Rory,

I started playing Baritone Horn in elementary school. I tinkered at the piano during my junior high and High School years.
I was a singer in a rock n roll band.

I was looking for a job one day and ended up in a Piano Store when I was 21. Piano Man in Catonsville Md was a start in music retail and a start are playing piano in 1986. I have played by ear ever since. I sang in different un-know bands & played some keyboard as well.

I worked in music retail for 22 years for Jordan Kitts Music, Chuck Levins Washington Music & Guitar Center and owned a music store for 3 1/2 years.

In 1999 I was hired by the USA distributor to start demonstrating Ketron X1 products at NAMM shows and did this until 2002. I created a owners video owners manual.

For the last 7 years I have been leading (paid position) a contemporary worship service using my Ketron SD1 and a Baldwin L.

I have an Audya arriving over the next few days. I think the best of my original music is yet to come.

------------------
http://www.esnips.com/web/SongsfromDanO



[This message has been edited by DanO1 (edited 04-26-2010).]

Dan...good luck with your new Audya, I know you'll make it shine!

D.

i took weekly classical clarinet lessons from age 11 to 16, played in hs band,and doodled on our baby grand, untaught. swapped clarinet for sax, played a few jazz gigs in college then put the sax away at 21 and did no music except piano doodling, and sitting in on vocals at little Long Island cocktail bars.
At the age of 35 I rented a loft in Manhattan at 14 E23rd st. which began as just a place for amateurs and semi-pro jazzers like myself to jam, but amazingly starting in 1975 grew into Jazzmania Society, one of the major venues on the Loft Jazz scene of the 70's, and had a 10-year run. i freelanced on sax and vocals until i moved to Miami in 1993, and opened MoJazz Cafe on Miami Beach in 1993, which ran 5 years. i started using arranger kbd in 2000
and worked solo gigs, then i met my percussionist Madafo in 2003 and we've worked as duo since. If you go to my site
at http://myspace.com/momorgen and hit on the bio link, you'll see my entire history as a presenter and musician. the guys who set it up didn't lay it out well, and it's very run-on and a pain to read, but it's all there.

------------------
Miami Mo

The Story Behind Keyboard Capers


To how Keyboard Capers came about...
I would like to introduce myself and tell you how I set up a Keyboard User Group for Wiltshire, England.

As a child I took an interest in the piano that my Father used to play. And I had a Grandfather - Ivanhoe Lancelot Keeping - who could play 21 instruments. He formed a trio with Violet Carson and went on and became one of the founders of the Black and White Minstrels Show. Over the years of growing up, it was my Grandfather who taught me to play, Classical, London songs and Musicals, all by ear. Then my Mother decided that I should go to Piano lessons, where this Teacher started me on Three Blind Mice, and I gave up. As time went on I got married and had two sons, and my eldest son, I put through Piano lessons, and he went on to form a group and played two keyboards, and this group got well known in Swindon, Wiltshire, and ended up playing on the Zebrugge and Rotterdam ferries.

In 1992, I was bought my first Keyboard as an xmas present, so I decided to buy myself a book and taught myself music. I don’t think that was a good idea for me, as I seemed to have lost my ear playing now. Over the years I upgraded the Technic keyboards, and now I have the KN7000, yet though this instrument has more realistic sounds, I would go back and prefer my KN2000.

However, after upgrading on these instruments, I now have the knowledge of what they can all do.

It was the challenge for me to discover and get to the bottom of ALL the things that each of those KNs that I owned could do, because I am driven to know how everything works - the need to conquer and understand the technology.

Because these Keyboards are so expensive, they are nice to sit down and play, and I found that getting into the sequencer, composer, sound edits, etc: you can go on to make your music sound even better. This practical knowledge was invaluable for when I had the opportunity to work in a music shop. This made me realise that there must be a lot of people out there that purchase these keyboards and once they have them out of the shops, they did not seem to have the after service.

I was invited to a Venue at Newbury race course, where I was introduced to the KN6000, and while I was there I met some lovely people, and also this gentleman that was telling me that he played round his local pubs, but did not know anything about the functions of his KN5000. I invited him and his wife to my home, where I showed him some of the things that he could do, and now we spend about an hour a week on the phone, where I tell him what buttons to press.

This made me consider whether a keyboard group was needed locally, so this is where my idea of setting up a group for our area came about. I advertised through my local newspaper, on Radio, and in the Tech-Plus mag here in the UK.

At the time I thought I had a big enough house that I could accommodate these meetings. However, after receiving seven phone calls, all of whom indicated a good level of interest in meeting up with like-minded people, I had to telephone round for a Venue. I came across a Community Centre, which is not far from me, and we were offered fortnightly evenings. It took some time to settle people in, and I drew up a list of what they would like to do. I had many telephone calls after that, where more people wanted to join. We now have had in excess of 50 members over the 10 years it has been running.

We intend to expand this particular concept of Keyboard groups across the U.K. primarily for the benefit of Keyboard Owners everywhere. And we anticipate affiliating keyboard clubs to "Keyboard Capers" and provide specific benefits for them to do so. However, that is all in the future and in the meantime we hope our guidelines " 10 essential ingredients" are useful and perhaps it will give a feel for the kind of thinking that will go into the whole concept.

You see 'we don't sell people keyboards - we help each other learn to play them.'

Yours musically

Midge
(Keyboardcapers)
www.keyboardcapersclub.com

First job...an officers club in Fairbanks, Alaska, playing Les Paul tunes (age 11).

At age 15, playing behind touring bands who came through Lexington (Jerry Lee Lewis, B.J. Thomas, the McCoys, etc.). Was house band player, and the only one who could read (music and English, probably). Directed the group of partial house players and some of the road guys (as many as were sober enough not to fall off the bandstand). Played behind Little Enis and the Fabulous Tabletoppers-the house band and well-know regional act). Did Dick Clark Caravan of Stars tours in the summer. A jazz sax guy (Duke Madison)took me to NARCO, a Federal Drug Rehab center in Lexington where I had the great honor to play with the cream of the jazz community, who, sadly, were also hardline druggies...in and out of the facility several times a year.

At 16 I went to California with my family (they spent the previous three years in Turkey and I stayed by myself in Lexington).

Got a house job and met Louis Belson and "Pearlie May", who got me a part-time gig on the Steve Allen syndicated show. Met Ella, Ray Brown, Herb Ellis, Oscar Brown Jr, and hung out at Shelly's Man Hole and other LA spots, where I heard the greatest selection of talent from the saddest, most bitter collection of geniuses you can imagine. Sadly, I was too green behind the ears to even appreciate what I heard (Monk, Lionel Hampton, etc.) Became forever hooked on Jazz, but thankfully, never got into the drug scene, except for an occasional joint or two.

Had discovered women and whiskey and was afraid I couldn't maintain that lifestyle, so I headed back to Kentucky. Highlights include playing with Roland Kirk, Jack McDuff, a house job with Winston Walls, etc.

Made some choices. Wasn't interested in the "He Haw" concept, and turned down an audition (Really stupid idea, I thought). Also wasn't not interested in a shot at the Brenda Lee band and Exile (a "Vanilla Fudge" kind of college band that made it big in (UGH) country).

Always worked days as a college professor and corporate communications officer; usually playing 6 nights a week, too.

Still work 4-6 jobs a week, but now, with no alcohol; preferably not in bars. Have worked over 53 years or in excess of 20,000 gigs with 9 total weeks off for vacation (usually re-locating), and am not even thinking of stopping.

I've been able to keep working because I have played bass, upright, guitar, B-3, piano, arranger, tenor banjo, drums in the jazz, rock, Brazilian, big band (and yes, Mason, EVEN COUNTRY) styles. Now, I'm a "society player", concentrating on jobs for the State Government, Local Government, colleges, Jazz Arts organizations, horse farm owners and non-profits.

I think I'm the luckiest guy alive. I played mostly what I wanted to, and was able to support my family on the income. Made my choices and wouldn't have had it any other way.


Russ

Sorry, folks...did this Saturday in a hurry while packing up for the gig...double post!


R.



[This message has been edited by captain Russ (edited 04-26-2010).]