At age 13 I started playing bass guitar by lack of a drum kit. My father took me with him in his band where I learned to play all kinds of music but mostly Rock&Roll and Country&Western. At home I listened to Jimi Hendrix, George Benson, David Bowie, Cassiopeia, Yellow Jackets, Level 42, Brothers Johnson, Miles Davis and a lot of other jazz-rock-funk orientated music. Around the age of 17 I picked up the guitar once in a while and tried playing with records of Mike Stern, John Scofield, Chick Corea, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Jimi Hendrix. But I really started to develop an interest for guitar at 20. One year later I started studying guitar at Conservatorium Maastricht where I got introduced to the music of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Michael Brecker, Arturo Sandoval.
Most of what I know and do I learned from playing with other musicians on stage, offstage, in studio, writing music in collaboration, jamming. Some of the people I met are Juan van Emmerloot, Walter Latupeirissa, Carlos Lake, Jan Rooijmans, Jan Somers, Timo Somers, Erwin Steylen, Rene Merkelbach, Nicky Manuputty, Barend Courbois
I like to write and produce my own music but also I like to work on music with other musicians. Together with Robert Brands we wrote 2 songs for CD The Mix Of The Century produced by Ruud Zegwaard (ex-director Arcade record company) released by Polygram/Polydor. In 2003 Stefan Therone from K-otic and I collaborated writing songs. This got us a nice record deal. Currently I am working on some new songs with Juan van Emmerloot who is incredible coaching me at all stages!
