Brad played his first paid gig in high school and has been performing ever since. Growing up in a musical family, there was always a guitar and a piano in the house.

“My older brother and sister had many years of piano lessons so we always had a piano around. I discovered early on that I could pick out melodies pretty easy from stuff I’d hear on the radio.”

Brad never took lessons, however, so he taught himself to play and broke all the rules in the process.

“You mean I’m supposed to use ALL of my fingers? What about the black keys?”

During freshman year in high school Brad was stricken with pneumonia and was stuck at home for two weeks. It was during this time that he dusted off his sister’s old Kay acoustic guitar, found a guitar songbook and proceeded to teach him self basic chords. Later on he picked up and played bass guitar in his first few bands until the disco era hit and keyboard arrangements were all the rage.

“We were looking for a keyboard player but there were none to be found. We had a few guys come over but it turned out I could play better than any of them, and I didn’t even play keyboards!”

So Brad bought his first keyboard rig: a Yamaha CP-30 piano, a Hohner string machine and a Cat lead synth, and started playing keys exclusively. Throughout the 80’s Brad played in Top-40/dance/lounge acts touring around N.E. Ohio, western Pennsylvania and West Virginia. In the 90’s, Brad was recruited to play in “Dartanian”, a veteran classic rock band with a huge following and an even bigger sound system, as a multi-instrumentalist responsible for covering keyboard and guitar parts. Since his move to California in 1995 Brad has embraced the multi-instrumentalist role and currently plays both keys and guitar in “Soundcheck”.

First Electric Guitar: The aforementioned Kay acoustic with a ceramic phonograph cartridge puttied to the bridge!

First Synthesizer: A homemade one-octave synth with pushbuttons for the keys and a rotary switch for selecting (slightly) different tones.