I grew up on a small farm in Massachusetts, with my father’s bluegrass band playing in our living room every Thursday night. Music was part of my life from the very beginning. My dad sang and played guitar, not for a living, just because he loved it. He’s an artist at heart. My grandmother was a musician too, and my mother made sure my brother and I were surrounded by all of it.
I started playing around six years old. It came naturally and I loved it. By eight, my brother and I were opening for my dad’s bluegrass band. That grew into the two of us playing out on our own and building a little brand around ourselves. By high school we were performing across the state, running our own small music business in bars, coffee shops, and local events.
Ten thousand hours in front of people
Right out of high school, an independent record label took notice, and we followed the thread. We built our own music brand and took it across the country and out to Australia, opening for bigger artists, writing and producing our own EPs and albums, and running our own live production. We spent years on the road through our late teens and twenties.
That’s where I did my ten thousand hours in front of an audience. Music, writing, and live performance taught me the things I still use every single day: how attention actually works, how to carry a story, how to move people through emotion, and how to hold a room in and out of a moment. Learning that young, on stage, changed how I understand content for good.
