Rocking Web 2point2

I always get excited when my next music gig falls into place.  A fun event.  A great crowd.  And a chance to share my deep personal interest in playing music.  It's always something fun to look forward to. 

Just the other day, Chris Heurer and his fiancee Kristie Wells invited me to play the Web 2point2 Release Party coming up on November 9th.  I was humbled to get the invitation.  How could I refuse?  A bunch of my industry colleagues all packed into the trendy club Fluid Ultra Lounge - I'm in.

My schedule is super hectic right now given our Series A activities.  But tuning up the songs allows me some relaxation and the opportunity to enjoy my guitar, a passion I truly love.   I started getting serious about the guitar about 8 years ago.  I always wanted to learn to play.  I finally got my chance during the many years of rainy weekends I spent in Seattle while working for Microsoft.  Then the planets really aligned when I first heard the "Live at Luther College" album by Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds.  The intricacies of the two guitars together haunted me with intrigue.  Dave's voice is cool, too.  I wanted to be able to play like that.

I researched and connected with an incredible guitar instructor, Pete Caruso.  I never would have advanced my playing so quickly without him.  About a year later we both got a good laugh.  Pete reminded me about our first lesson together.  I showed up with my guitar and the "Live at Luther College" CD.  I played the CD and told Pete those are the songs I wanted to learn.  He asked me to play a song on my guitar so he could get a sense of my ability (I could play maybe 3 or 4 chords at the time).  I played a little.  And Pete surprisingly kept a straight face.  The music was far beyond my ability.  But with some dedication and building on the foundation of music training I received from my father, I started picking it up pretty quickly.  After I had some of the songs under my belt, Pete jokingly confessed his initial skepticism - and I could tell he was proud of how much I had accomplished.

A year or so later a band started to form.  Since I was learning so many Dave Matthews songs I called it mostlyDave.  The next thing I knew, we were playing in front of 350 people at a charity event to celebrate my 40th birthday.  It was quite a party.  We played at the Seattle FUNC (the old Red Hook Brewery warehouse).  I had friends fly in from various parts of the country.  A bunch of my friends from Microsoft came.  Each of the band members had their clans there as well.  Being on stage in front of that many people was a rush.  I still felt like a novice behind the guitar and microphone but I had a great birthday.  Our friends seemed to have fun, too.  A few new couples got together for the first time that night.  And one of the couples ended up getting married.

We started gigging around Seattle at bars, private parties and charity events.  We had seven people in the band back then.  It was a lot of fun.

Unfortunately, when I moved back to San Francisco in 2003, the band broke-up.  It was a bummer.  I needed to start over.  I met a great sax player in the City, Andrew Tobin.  We started playing as a duo at bars here in the City which was a lot of fun.  But eventually he moved back to Colorado.  Scott Craig, our lead guitar player from Seattle, moved to San Francisco around that same time.  He and I started tuning up the songs in anticipation of playing some gigs, but then he got in a bad bike accident.  He does join me at the gigs still, but unfortunately he's not able to play as many songs as he used to.  I continue to keep the mostlyDave set list alive and look forward to getting connected with more musicians in the future.

I'm very excited to play the Web 2point2 Release Party!  If you're reading this and you're in San Francisco on November 9th, I hope you can join us.

I don't have any grand illusions about where playing music will take me.  I keep it in my life because I enjoy it.  And because the people that go to our gigs have always been so supportive.