When I think about how music became such a big part of my life, I don't really think about talent. I think about people. At almost every turn, someone made room for me - a parent, a teacher, a friend, a stranger at a lunch table - and said yes.
It started with a Casio
My dad was a voiceover artist and ran advertising companies, so I grew up around microphones, mixing boards, and the production side of audio. But the thing that really grabbed me was a Casio keyboard my brother got for Christmas. It had a built-in sampler, and the two of us spent hours recording sounds and playing them back across the keys.
Around age five or six, I got a small Casio of my own - the kind with little cartridges that played a song and lit up the keys so you could follow along. My mom would listen and tell me I had a natural gift. Honestly, I'm not sure I did. But she believed it, and that made me want to work hard enough to prove her right.
So when I asked for piano lessons in first grade, my parents said yes without a second thought.
My piano teacher, Susan, was incredibly patient with me. I was a "burst of motivation" learner - stretches of intense practice followed by stretches of not much at all. Not every teacher would have stuck with a student like that. She stayed with me for almost ten years, until other instruments - and just being a teenager - started pulling me in other directions.
I didn't fully appreciate it at the time, but her patience gave me room to keep finding my way back to music. She taught me something about being a mentor that went well beyond piano.
From taking lessons to giving them
In fifth grade, my best friend started taking guitar lessons and showed me a few chords. I taught myself by translating songs I already knew on piano into guitar shapes, plus a steady diet of very easy punk songs. We wanted to start a band, and since he was the better guitarist, I picked up bass and took a couple of years of lessons.
In middle school, I joined orchestra and picked up the viola. I absolutely loved it, and I played first chair all the way through middle school.
The summer before high school, I was helping the audio/video team at my church. One day a group of us went out to lunch, and the conversation turned to instruments. Someone asked about the difference between a violin and a viola, and of course I jumped in with an explanation of alto clef and string tuning.
One of the guys at the table, it turned out, managed the music store down the road - the same store where I'd bought my first guitar. Their busy back-to-school rental season was coming up, and he offered me a job on the spot. At that point in my life, it was my dream job.
Over the next couple of years, I got to know local music teachers, tried every instrument I could get my hands on, and eventually started teaching. It began with one casual student. His parents told their friends, those parents told theirs, and before long I was teaching about ten kids guitar every week.
One of those very first students stuck with it. He went on to play guitar in several bands, and I'll never forget the first time I watched him play a concert. Standing in that crowd, I felt such a sense of pride, watching something I'd helped start take on a life of its own. It's a feeling I hope every music teacher gets to experience.
The other side of the counter
That store is also where the idea for Rise Thru Music was born. I wrote about it in Why We Started Rise Thru Music, but some of those moments deserve more detail.
When a family fell behind on an instrument rental, the manager sometimes had to go knock on their door to get it back. I'd picture the kid on the other side of that door, losing something they'd worked so hard at - and then having to show up to band or orchestra the next day with nothing to play, explaining to their friends what happened.
A big part of my job was taking monthly payments for private lessons. Every so often a card would decline, and I'd imagine a parent trying to stretch their last few dollars to pay for something their kid loved. I didn't know each family's circumstances, but I saw what happened when the payment didn't go
through: that student simply came off the schedule, through no fault of their own.
Those moments are the reason Rise Thru Music exists. I knew exactly what I'd been given growing up, and every one of those kids deserved the same yes I got.
Where I am now
These days, I run Rise Radio & TV, the family business I took over after working alongside my dad for almost 20 years. We provide in-store music and messaging for independent retailers. Looking back, he was mentoring me for that role through much of our time together.
I still play, and I always will. Music is where I go to unwind - a way to turn off the noise in my head by making some on the outside. My favorite audience now is my daughter. I love jamming with her, encouraging her to get creative, and showing her what practice really looks like.
That last part matters to me. People often call a great performance "talent"; and they mean it as a compliment. But a performance is a snapshot. It doesn't show the years of practice behind it, the frustrating weeks, or the people who kept showing up for you. That's the part I want her to understand, and it's the part Rise Thru Music is built around.
Why I'm doing this
I serve as President of Rise Thru Music, and I'm proud to be doing this with friends I've known for most of my life. We're building it alongside our regular jobs, each contributing the time, experience, and relationships we've developed over the years.
Our model is simple: connect students with vetted music teachers at existing music schools or through our volunteer network, and provide the instruments and materials they need to succeed. Every time I describe it, I realize I'm describing my own childhood - the parents who said yes, the teacher who didn't give up, the friend who showed me my first chords, the stranger who took a chance on a teenager who knew a little too much about clefs.
Not every kid has those people. Rise Thru Music exists to help make sure more of them do.
If you'd like to be one of those people - as a mentor, a volunteer, a donor, or simply by sharing our story - we'd love to have you with us.
