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I was selected as one of 20 semi-finalists in the 2007-2008 PASTE Magazine Rock'n'Reel at Sea / Cayamo Singer-Songwriter Competition. The winner was to join Emmylou Harris, Lyle Lovett, Shawn Colvin, Patty Griffin, and many other incredible artists on a cruise in February 2008. Although I did not win, I made it to the top 5, so it was a very good run. The Bowmans from Brooklyn got the spot on the cruise. To see more details about the cruise, visit www.cayamo.com. To visit what is left of the contest page, click here.

Born June 19, 1982, Dothan, Alabama, I started to play the drums when I was around 10, the guitar at around 13, and then wrote my first song at 16. Recorded my first bit of music around 2000 using home equipment, and posted two songs on Napster (back when Napster was in its original form). Those songs got pretty popular, actually, and I found out some time later a few kind people had been covering them.

In college I bought some better recording equipment and recorded an album of original songs called Luckyfish. I got some good press on that album, and a few people in Europe really liked it. Interesting story, I bought the microphone I used to record that album after meeting Damien Rice and asking him what he used to record "O." It was after a concert before that album got really popular. Of course, I still couldn't get it to sound as good as he did. Luckyfish was available August 2004.

After recording Luckyfish, I went down to Venezuela where I lived for four months in a little town called Carorita in the Andes Mountains. I taught English and guitar, farmed, coached a baseball team, worked in a clinic as a translator, and did a bunch of other things. I also wrote a lot down there. It was wonderful.

Summer 2005 I returned to the United States and that fall started law school at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. Second summer, I decided I wanted to record again, but in a real studio. At this point, I was writing music that was much different than Luckyfish. I felt Nashville was a good home for it.

So I booked some time in a studio called OMNIsound (where Mindy Smith recorded often and where Porter Wagoner recorded his last CD before he passed). In August 2007 I recorded three original songs there with some session musicians. I entered one of them into a contest with PASTE Magazine for a chance to play alongside Emmylou Harris, Lyle Lovett, John Hiatt, Shawn Colvin, Patty Griffin, and other incredible musicians on a music-themed cruise. Some months later I found out I was a finalist, and then some months after that, I made it to the top five.

In January 2008 I returned to OMNIsound to record seven more original songs. In April 2008 I am releasing Happy, a full-length CD with all of the songs recorded at OMNIsound.

I called the CD "Happy" because I kept saying that that was what I wanted the songs to sound like. So I felt that it was an appropriate name. It was also appropriate because we had a lot of fun making it. The first three songs were recorded in August 2007 and the last seven were recorded in January 2008 (with some additional recording in February and March).

Keeping the budget pretty tight, we cut pretty much all the instruments in about seven hours overall in the studio (combined, both August and January). So most of the songs were done live, with only a few overdubs. Also, there was no producer on this project, but Pat McGrath--who was the band leader for the session musicians--and I met twice, each time before going into the studio, and we talked about arrangement. That was pretty much the only production. Everything else just kind of happened, with Pat steering the way and with me trying to explain what I was hearing.

Then I did vocals for a few days. They took a while because I was getting used to the studio experience, and I had to get comfortable (and through the anxiety). At this point, it was just the engineer, Stoker White, and I just doing it ourselves. We had Matt Woods, a buddy of mine and a musician in Nashville, and Crystal Thomas, another Nashville musician, come and lay down some vocals on a few songs.

Then when I got back to Macon, Phil Hill and Charles Duffey, buddies of mine from law school, helped me to do a few more overdubs using my home Pro Tools unit. We spent many, many hours in between classes trying to figure out the best way to do things. Ultimately, we got some really great sounds on five of the tracks (background vocals, fiddle/violin, viola, xylophone, electric guitar, percussion). Then we sent everything back on a DVD to Nashville and Stoker mixed everything in.

After some more magic, there was a CD called "Happy."

Now go be happy. If you want to check it out my other CD, Luckyfish, click here.
Go buy a cool shirt from my friends at www.decadetees.com.