My father started my brother and me on violin very early. Me at the age of 5, my brother 6. We had private instruction in my parent's living room for an hour each every saturday morning for many many years. (my oldest brother, 7 years my elder would often be trying to sleep, still hungover from partying the night before....and in mid lesson, I'd see him dragging a sleeping bag out the front door to go sleep in the car so he wouldn't have to bare the sound of cats fighting (beginner violin) for 2 solid hours!
) I played in elementary school and Jr High string ensembles (since they didn't have proper combined full orchestras at that age.) In Jr High I was also playing in the Prince Gerorge's County Youth Orchestra which had practices 2 evenings a week and I carpooled w/ a few other players from my hometown. Then in High School, my father wasn't a fan of the violin instructor as he was more concerned about how student players made him look rather than properly teaching the instrument. Instead of teaching theory and what notes you were actually playing, he only stressed "if the little black dot is on this line of the ledger, you put your third finger on this string" lazy cheat method....so my father insisted I drop school orchestra and focus just on the county Senior Youth Orchestra. By then it was all tryout based. You'd have to go onstage in front of a panel of county music instructors, play a predetermined solo piece, then sight read a piece, then return later for an ensemble piece where chair positioning would be finalized. My Sr year had a big final concert at the Kennedy Center...my Dad's dream (not mine). All in all, I probably played in 50+ string ensemble/orchestra concerts in big auditoriums packed w/ fellow student's families, plus biannual recitals w/ both solo pieces and duets w/ my brother that were put on by my private instructor featuring all of his students. My mom still has several vinyl albums that were pressed from a few select concerts, and she also recorded several others on cassette.
^^during most of that time spent w/ a violin jammed under my chin, I was really only listening to rock music and really just wanted to play guitar. My oldest brother had a decent Yamaha acoustic that I was tinkering with whenever I had the chance, and after that Kennedy Center concert, I finally told my dad, that's enough fiddling about. I want to play guitar! Playing chords and rhythm took the longest as it was so foriegn compared to violin, but single note soloing sort of came easy to me. I had 1-2 cheapo guitars, then I bought myself a 76 cherryburst custom Les Paul and a Mesa 50. Cal amp and not long after was playing lead guitar in a band called The Violators. We covered Beatles, Stones, Who, Zep, Police, Talking Heads, and a slew of others ranging from Zevon to ZZ Top, to Zappa....and a handful of originals I wrote. The band's name was very fitting as we pretty much violated every thing we played
), but, I was surrounded by a few mediocre players. Our drummer, for instance, was an antimetronome! Seems every time he went from hi hat to ride cymbal, his tempo would increase. It was like riding a damn rollercoaster, but we had a lot of fun nonetheless. Did that for about 6 yrs, playing a bunch of clubs in and around Maryland, plus lots of parties and local festivals
I then went on to the tech side, becoming a sound and lighting tech at a local college, while also running FOH for a bunch of bands at various clubs in the DC/Balt area...and also running lights for others. (I didn't find out till many years later, the entire light rig I ran countless times at the Bayou in Georgetown was once the touring lights for the band Rush back in 74-75.
Then a band from my hometown who were taking off in the jam band scene asked me to go on the road w/ them in the early 90's as their tour mgr. We did over 250 shows a year from Maine to Fla and every state east of the Mississippi, plus several winter tours to ski resorts in Colorado. We got to open for a bunch of big acts at Merriweather (Santana, Allman Bros, Grand Funk, etc) Our bread and butter was private shows at fraternity houses. It was a wild time. We'd pull into "frat row" on a friday night, set up and play in a putrid smelling basement of a frat in front of 50-100 drunk kids and get paid 2-3 thousand dollars. During set breaks, we'd walk around to the other frats to see what other bands were playing. On any given weekend, you could have Dave Mathews at one house, Hootie and the Blowfish at another, Govt Mule at another, Widespread Panic at another, Col Bruce Hampton and the Aquarium Rescue Unit at another, etc.. Then we'd stay at a nearby motel, and go back and play yet another frat house at the same school the next night! Basically dragging our gear just across the street. Even better, if it was near pledge time, the frat bros would make the pledges hump all our gear for us!! Those small private schools (especially off rt 81 in Va) are some of the hardest partying schools I've ever seen! Much crazier than big state schools (and I've been in every frat of every major university east of the Mississippi!) Another one which surprised me was the "supper clubs" at Princeton in NJ. Milet Mignon dinners served by a team of hired chefs, mountains of cocaine on the tables of the upstairs libraries, and just partying galore! I don't know how most of those kids ever got diplomas!
We were a mainstay at the Tiger Club there. (frats were outlawed in NJ so they got around it by calling them "supper clubs", but the wild lifestyle remained.