I started playing guitar around when I was 5 years old. Oddly enough it’s because I saw the Mighty Ducks movie, and my mother bought me a Queen CD because I enjoyed the music so much. That’s actually really what did it, Emilio Estevez, a great music director, and Queen. But mostly Queen.

 

It wasn’t until about 1996-1997 that I finally fed the curiosity I had toward “guitar music” when I was exposed to the likes of Jon Finn, Steve Vai, and of course the masterful Terry Syrek (who I would study with from that point until when I left for college in 2004). This is when things changed, and direction became a lot clearer.

 

From that point onward I had started to write my own music, and to take advantage of (by that point) my abilities to play the rest of the instruments I’d need to accompany myself on recordings. Over the course of 1999 to 2004 I would end up playing in New York, Las Vegas, Orlando, and a few other places, either playing my own music or as a guitarist in one band or another.

 

The year 2000 saw me writing, and recording, a three song demo release called Liquid Blasphemy, engineered, partly produced, mixed, and mastered, by my old friend and serious life-saver Mr. John Angier. I had my own multitrack recorder at that point and was making fairly crude recordings of my work, but the Liquid Blasphemy demo was my first actual “studio” experience.

 

In 2001 I acquired my first computer-based recording system (Pro Tools and Logic) and began the work/learning experience that would end up becoming my self titled release from 2003/2004. Seven songs, it took very long to produce at the time, John helped a bit again as well. It was rough around the edges sure, but that was my first foray into self-producing/engineering/mixing/mastering a record (albeit still with help from John).

 

It was all of the experience toiling on that record actually that led me to becoming an actual freelance producer/engineer/mixer currently (however you can read more about that on the Strategic Sonics website).

 

The musician/guitarist side of me was in a state of relative dormancy save for the playing I did while I was in college. For a long time production work for other artists and bands was (still is) the focus. There were attempts along the way to start writing and making music again, but every attempt ended up feeling extremely forced and the majority of the work was usually either thrown out or shelved the next day.

 

It wasn’t until October of 2012 when the dormant entity that is music-maker me would reawaken. It wasn’t really because I wanted to, but it was because sometimes in life the safest way to deal with an extreme situation is to create as opposed to destroy…and that’s the shortest of the short version.

 

In 2014 I bring you (de)Tested, the first new solo music release from me in nearly a decade. What you will hear is the culmination of emotional and mental extremes, the true precipice of my resilience and sanity, and ultimately the most emotionally vital connection I’ve ever had to any piece of music I’ve worked on in my life so far.

 

I always struggle to write these kinds of things because time doesn’t stop and things keep changing….

 

-Jeremy