After graduating from high school, I opted to get a job working as a barback at a popular Irish pub. I soon found myself adopting the recreational activity of getting drunk, thus beginning a three-year bout with alcoholism (very few pictures exist of me doing anything remotely musical around this time). When I was sober, I practiced the guitar heavily enough that by the summer of 1991, I was ready to take a stab at writing and recording. Bill Dierker let me borrow his 4-track recording unit in exchange for laying down drum tracks on his material. The first song I recorded was "Cut The Grass." It wasn't the first song I ever wrote, but it was definitely the first song I ever wrote that had a point to it (unlike my first composition, Kitchen Floor).

After recording "Cut The Grass," I decided to buy my own 4-track and write more songs. Problem was, I had very little to write about, my musical tastes were stylistically all over the place, and I was still drinking. Add to this the advent of grunge and hip-hop -- and a cultural wasteland known as "alternative radio" -- and you've got a pretty good explanation of why my music made no sense. I did, however, find two other people willing to be seen in public playing my music: grade school friend Phil Dekeuster on drums and former Hellhound Adam Scherrer on bass. We played a grand total of three shows, and we somehow managed to fit bagpipes into the band for one of them. Jimmy Riddle (bagpipes) also added vocals to our ode to crossing guard safety, "Watch That Child."

By 1993, I was a shambles. I had no band -- but I did manage to keep making noise with Brian McCauley, a guy who found the bass to be a perfect instrument for ham-fisted drunkenness. As much as I liked hanging out with Brian and getting drunk, my music sucked. Instead of writing about life experiences, I was writing songs about sketches I'd seen on Saturday Night Live. I had very little to inspire me and I had very little self-esteem, so on Christmas 1993, I decided to quit drinking.

Fast-forward to a year later: I was playing drums in a "ska/funk/punk/metal/soul/techno" band called Mind at Large. It was definitely a sobering experience. I loved the guys in the band, but we were a tough act to share a square mile with (we played ska-metal, for the love of God!). Our shining moment was opening for the then-unknown Offspring at Bernard's Pub in St. Louis, where the singer kept yelling at us from the back of the bar to get off the stage. At one point I thoroughly agreed with him. We played four shows before quietly going back to the basement for good.