Nontheless, I did play a lot of piano by ear, and because I also played trumpet and had a couple of years of piano lessons, I always seemed to know how to read music on at least a rudimentary level.
 

Fast forward to college. After years of playing piano at home, playing trumpet in John Marshall's band (I was lucky enough to go through JM in the glory years, and owe much of my musical success and career choice to Director Ron Rose), and singing in my dad's (and later Dave Dayton's) choirs, I sold my trumpet, became an advertising major, and had no musical outlet other than the radio. Eighties radio, no less. In some ways, I feel lucky that I am not damaged any further than what you see.
 

But my friends and I did often go see a lot of outstanding local performers of the day, including Acoustical Ambience, Kenny Zara, and several others. But my favorite was a guy named Gary Roper, who always seemed to be playing at a local bar called Gibbie's. I have no doubt that those who were around Morgantown at that time will see many similarities between Gary's act and my own. I thought so highly of him that I copied practically everything he did. I feel very fortunate that I came across someone for whom I had that level of respect. Gary was a professional musician in every sense of the word, and 14 years later, played in my wedding.
 

So I got my first guitar as a Christmas present from my mom in December of 1989, and the following March I played my first open mic at Gibbie's. It was a Tuesday, and I played "Something In the Way She Moves" by James Taylor, not realizing that there were about eighty bazillion songs that I could have learned faster. But as it turned out, my ignorance served me well. By concentrating so hard on a style of playing that was a little more technically challenging, I inadvertently made a lot of other tunes seem pretty easy. I continued to play open mic nights, learn as many songs as I could, and go to Gary's gigs and ask him if I could sing and/or play whenever possible (a practice I am now pretty ashamed of, by the way).
 

Then, after graduating from WVU, I eventually played my first paid gig on October 18th, 1991 (a Friday), at a little place in Marietta, Ohio. (I was living just across the river in Parkersburg, WV at the time). I even forget the name of the bar, but I told them I had a lot of experience playing back in Morgantown--though I didn't define "a lot", and I left out the part about not actually being paid by anyone yet. I just barely had enough tunes to make it through a three-hour show, but I did, and from that point on, gigs eventually started coming more regularly...at least until I started working at University High School in 2000.
 

The UHS job was so big and so time-consuming that I went several years playing only about five or six times a year. Then I remembered that I really missed performing and jumped back into it with both feet in about 2005.
 

So at this point, I plan to play at every opportunity. It's just too much fun not to, and the supplemental income is surprisingly good, which is especially important now that the money I once spent on new musical equipment is now spent on things like daycare, diapers, bicycles, baseball, Christmas gifts, birthday gifts, doctor's appointments...

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*Names have not been changed in order to implicate the guilty