Singer | Songwriter | Performer | Composer
My journey began as an only child who was adopted & raised from a very low-income family of three that started out in Miami, Florida, and continued through a tiny little redneck town called Eureka in upper central Florida. By the time I was sixteen, I had endured being beaten and abused, survived being a four-time runaway who had hitchhiked up and down the eastern seaboard from Miami to New York City & then across the country to Portland Oregon & back. On my seventeenth birthday, I joined the Marine Corps & signed up for Force Recon which is the special forces division of the Marines. Once I was out of the service and was hanging out in Sausalito, California with the rest of the hippie movement I found my love of music & cooking & I followed them both onto a two-lane highway of soul-satisfying goodness, self-fulfillment & a newborn sense of unbridled ambition.
That road continued until I came to a crossroad where my love of songwriting & music took over the highway and I let it take me wherever it wanted me to go and never looked back. Many times I was laughed at because my journey had me taking some very strange side roads and trails but I stayed the course and it’s led me to where I am in life today & I continue following my road and try not to look back as much as I can help it because I believe that the less you look back the longer the road is in front of you.
What were the biggest initial hurdles and how did you overcome them?
That's easy, I have to believe that my biggest hurdles were those of learning how to live with the indifference that I was shown and not knowing how to proudly be myself in any surroundings that I found myself in. Growing up the way I did leave me with extremely low self-esteem and even though I had huge dreams and vast amounts of ambition I had to learn everything pretty much the hard way and when it came to just be with everyday people was a task because I had never been taught any kind of people skills at all so the millions of mistakes I made always either slowed me down or knocked me off the path I was on. After years and years of taking one step forward and six backward, I finally asked God to give me a hand and help me figure out how to stay on the right path without making so many stupid mistakes and in time I finally found a good balance but trust me it still isn't easy street and there are always potholes and ditches that I find myself either stepping or falling in and I have to get myself back up and put one foot in front of the other. The best part of all of it is that the older I get, it does seem to feel like I make fewer and fewer mistakes and there are fewer and fewer hurdles to jump over. Thank God
What books are you currently reading?
I am reading two books right now, "Sierra Six" by one of my favorite authors, Mark Greaney and I have this awesome app called "Headway" which gives me a short book on self-growth to read a page or two a day and I am in the middle of one called "Stop Overthinking" and I just finished
"How to stop worrying and start living".
What advice would you give to upcoming youth or talents locally and internationally?
The only advice that I can give anyone is the exact same advice that was given to me which was:
1. Don't stop believing in your dreams because once you stop then there's not much else that can help make them come true.
2. The three P's are your most important letters....With Perseverance, Persistence, and Patience. Without any of these, you won't make it to the goal line.
3. Probably the most important and definitely the hardest to do is "Don't let anyone ever tell you that you can't do something that you want to when it comes to your dreams" because you are in charge of your own dreams and only you know how deep they are and how far you'll go to see them come true!
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