Bio
As of September 25, 2007, I am 30
years
old with approximately 20 years of drumming. I am a
Filipino. I was born in the Philippines (Manila). My dad
moved to the United States for a job offer when I was 1 year old and
then we all joined him in the states when I was 5 years old.
I was always fascinated by the drums and loved watching drummers
whenever I would see a band perform. My family was not much of
concert goers, so my only real exposure to seeing a drummer play live
was at church when our church would have special music concerts with
bands. I used to experiment "playing" on the washing machine and
dryer at home...kicking the side for the deep bass drum sound, tapping
on the lid for the "ride bell", and tapping on the settings panel to
get a snare sound. I think after a while of doing that, my
parents finally got the hint that it might actually be a good idea to
get me a real drum set (instead of buying a new washer and dryer).
I got my first drum set the summer before I started 5th grade and the
passion for the instrument grew ever since. From 5th grade to 7th
grade, I only took one month of actual drum lessons. From the one
month of lessons, I found out that drummers also read music. I
sort of already knew how to read music from learning a little piano
(there is always a piano in a Filipino home), but now I knew how to
"interpret" them for the drums.
Because of my lack of confidence in what I knew, I hesitated ever
joining the school band even when, in 7th grade, the band teacher heard
me play and kept trying to get me to join the school advanced
band. I finally gave in and joined the advance band in 8th grade
(skipping beginning band), with much hesitation (I still didn't even
know how to do buzz roll). I remember first day of band class, I
had to ask my fellow classmates how to do a drum roll. The
quickly showed me (using the really bad "tea cup" technique). For
a whole year, I did my drum rolls with my pinkies curled to the side
and my thumb and index fingers being the only grip I had on the
stick. Before the end of the year, there were high school
students that came recruiting for high school marching band, the first
thing they told me was to get rid of that "tea cup" technique.
The whole summer before I started high school, I worked on holding the
sticks properly when doing rolls, and how to hold traditional
grip. I was also very lucky to see the DCI competition on a PBS
station so I had a good starting idea of what "marching band" was about.
When band camp started, the drum instructor asked me what I wanted to
try out for. I said I wanted to play snare. He had me do a
few things on a snare drum and the next thing I knew I was playing
snare. I didn't realize how unusual it was to have a freshman
playing snare in the drum line at the time. I have to admit, I
had some really tollerant line mates, becuase now that I think about
it, I never really understood the whole idea of "clean double strokes"
until the second half of the year during drum line competition.
Then, I started learning about technique, musicality with the snare,
and being able to listen to the other musicians in the line. I
ended up playing snare for all four years of high school.
I also joined the high school jazz band as the set player during my
freshman year. It was a fortunate/unfortunate experience for
me. The fortunate part was being expose to traditional jazz/big
band style of music. The unfortunate part was that I really
didn't have a drum set instructor to show me the "tricks" that I am now
just beginning to discover about jazz playing. Of all the people
in the high school band, I was the only one that actually played the
drumset (not just for school, but for my own personal enjoyment).
For my four years of high school, I was the only drum set player.
High school band also involved symphonic band music which I ended up
being default Tympanist because I was the only one that could read
melodic notation. I give a lot of credit to my high school years
in shaping my musical path. I would say that it was during those
four years that I really learned how to read complex snare notation for
drum line, symphonic band percussion music, and jazz charts. I'm
not really that good of a sight reader anymore, but all that experience
has helped me very much with my more current experiences reading music
of musical theater gigs, for example.
Although I formed my first "band" in 8th grade (with Jim Williams and
Charles Son, covering the music of The Doors), it wasn't until my
sophomore year in high school that I formed my first "creative" band
with my friends Robert Morikone, Jim Williams, and Duncan
Stewart. We called ourselves
Barfing Tomato's and it
was my original goal to have our "music" (more like random noise
non-music) played on college radio show called "I Hate Music" on KSPC
88.7 FM Pomona. I did send them a tape, but I doubt they ever
played it. Barfing Tomato's evolved into several different
manifestations throughout high school and released two tapes around
school, The Crawlen Jam and The Under-Underground (with a re-release of
version 2). We also release a single that we presented as our
English class project called "Hop-Frog" based on the Edgar Allan Poe
story (myself on guitar, Eddie Burmudez on vocals, and Jason O'Donnell
on drums). Jim and Duncan ceased being involved by that
time. Robert Morikone and I had a falling out and he went on to
form
The
Baggers. By the time they released their first tape and
spread it around school, Barfing Tomato's was just an idea in the back
of my head. The Baggers, to me, was the epitome of the kind of
underground lo-fi punk that I always wanted Barfing Tomato's to be
like. (Robert and I have since then mended our friendship).
By the time I graduated from high school, I was still in contact with
many of my "marching band" friends and it was during that time (circa
1995) that Barfing Tomato's started manifesting itself into a more
cohesive idea. I started formulating my own musical ideas and
since I could not find a guitar player to play them, I ended up giving
up my seat behind the drums and moved to being guitar player and
eventually the vocalist as well Many people came and went during that
time, including: Jason O'Donnell (drums), Oscar Rodriguez (bass/drums),
Ken Willette (bass/drums), Eddie Bermudez (vocals). It was also
during that time that the two other core members of the band joined me:
Kameron Kalie and Clinton Mosley. Kameron had to leave the band
for a couple of years and was replace by Matt Davis. We also had
quite a roster drummers that came and went, including: Jason O'Donnell,
Daniel Sanchez, and Nate Dellinger.
By the time Daniel Sanchez left the band, Barfing Tomato's was already
beginning to take a different direction. We were playing more and
more serious music and we were being lead to more and more ministry
oriented things being that Clinton and I were very much involved in our
churches. So, we had decided to change our name to Downhill
Supercruiser. We ended up having Nate Dellinger join the band and
shortly after, Matt Davis left. Kameron Kalie re-joined on
bass. The final line-up of Downhill Supercruiser as a four-piece
was Nate Dellinger on drums, Kameron Kalie on bass, Clinton Mosley on
guitar/vocals, and myself on lead guitar/vocals. We had an
inconsistent progress during that time and after a while things were
beginning to feel stagnant. There was no motivation and no
progress. There wasn't any community effort to share the
burden. It all fell to my lap. By this time, I was pretty
much emotionally and mentally exhausted and tried to give the band one
last chance. With the lack of any real group effort, I eventually
decided to disolve it altogether and concentrate on recording the CD
that was given as the wedding favors at my wedding. It took me
most of 2006 to do the finish the CD, but it was something that I could
honestly say that was finished to the utmost completion. It was a
sigh of relief and a great sense of accomplishment. And,
nonetheless, a testiment of God's work in my life and my wife's
life. It was a story I wanted to tell everyone and I wanted to be
able to communicate that in the music I put in the CD.
In 2007, I decided to take a haitus from being in a band, but I didn't
take a break from playing the drums. I became more involved with
playing with the worship team at Granada Heights Friends Church in La
Mirada, CA lead by
Justin Francis
(who's album, I ironically played bass on many tracks for).
Justin originally met me as a bass player when I was playing bass for
Mushpot.
And
more ironic, I ended up getting more gigs as a bass player through
Mushpot than I was getting any drum gigs. Mushpot eventually
parted ways and my weekly "music" activity was gone.
I had a few musical theater/performing arts gigs playing the drums and
a consistent schedule with the worship team at Granada Heights Friends
Church, but I was really wanting to find a band that I can really "play
out" with.
In the beginning of 2008, I decided to try once again to put an ad in
the Recycler and within a few days of the posting I got a call from
Shane and a few days later I decided to join his band, Alive in One.