I was born the 2nd youngest of 7 kids in Clarksville Tennessee and was raised just about my whole life in Clarksville. I have 5 brothers and 1 sister and although we grew up broke, we were never poor..(I think being poor is a state of mind and being broke will pass when you work a little harder to make more money). I have worked hard pretty much my whole life.. I like many styles of Music but my favorite style is "Elvis" style. I dont think Elvis' music should be classified as Rock, Country,or Blues, I think he had a style that was all his own and should be simply called "Elvis Style" because it is like no other Music out there..it is in a style all it's own. When I started performing in the Music business Elvis Presley was the influence in my life to get me started. I loved to sing his Music and practiced often and started getting attention from several Booking Agents in the Nashville area and it soon spread to several States wanting to book me for Corporate Events and Private parties across the USA and Canada. I knew if I wanted to portray the most loved Artist in the World I would need to do a few things to please the Die-Hard Elvis fans that would see me perform in his image. First I would need to get in shape and stay in shape and look my best just as Elvis did for the most part of his career. Second I needed to be a giver, just like Elvis did! I needed to use my Talent to draw people to the shows and try and raise money for some of the most needed charities in the World such as Kids with Disabilities, Cancer, Diabeties, Mentally Retarded, and many many more worthwhile Charities that I believed in. I did my part to help raise thousands of dollars performing for these Charities and never regretted a moment of it.Third most important thing was I needed to get the very best Costumes that money can buy to portray Elvis in a respectful way, I didnt want to look clownish on stage, I wanted to look like a professional performer and carry myself in a professional manner on and off stage, this was probably the most important issue I faced because I had seen so many Elvis Tribute Artist that didnt know how damaging they were to Elvis' image because they did not get quality Costumes, and they did not understand that when you walk off the stage your show is over, take the Costume off and become yourself again and stop trying to talk and dress like Elvis off stage, become yourself! So I did all of these things, and I accepted only Theater style gigs or gigs that were in a professional setting such as Gibson Guitar Theater in Nashville, Hard Rock Cafe Louisville, Annaheim Convention Center in California, Kentucky Kingdom in Louisville, MGM Casino Las Vegas, Casino Novia Scotia in Canada..You get the picture, I stayed away from performing bars and focused on the larger settings and Theater style gigs. In the middle of doing all these shows I had always wondered what would I sound like if I tried to sing some non-elvis music, could I find some original material and go into a real studio and make a CD of original music? In 2004 tragedy struck and I was involved in an Auto accident that damaged the nerves in my right leg, I continued to perform my shows but I was performing in pain when I would move a certain way, so I knew I would have to reduce the amount of shows I was performing or stop performing completely. By 2006 I had already reduced the amount of shows from around 60 per year to somewhere around 10 per year due to the accident, and then tragedy struck once more. My Father was diagnosed with a Terminal illness and I did not want to book anymore public out of town shows because of the fear that if he passed away while I was in another State or Country it would cause big problems refunding tickets and cancelling shows. So instead of giving up my music completely because my stage performance was damaged because of my accident, and because I was skeptical to book and out of town gig because of my fathers illness, I decided to use the extra time I had to finally go into the studio and create a CD of mostly original songs, and thats what I did! And the CD has far surpassed my expectations in sales and I can thank my loyal friends and fans that have followed my shows through the past years for the help. So now I am no longer performing the live Elvis style shows, I have no plans to start performing live again because of the injury, but if I can find a way to limit the pain while on stage without drugs I would be tempted to start booking shows again and get back on stage because I really miss performing.
