Ladders To Fire
2002 – Present

For the better part of 30 years, I have been a songwriter. I spent many years as a folk/roots rock/Americana performer. I have never thought of myself as a “musician.” I play the guitar, the bass, and some basic percussion, but I have always been a word guy.

Music was always an afterthought for me. It was all about the lyrics. Lyrics were the important thing to me, and the music was the medium through which the words’ message was conveyed. My good friend (and Dream Theater keyboardist) Jordan Rudess had developed a synthesizer app for the iPhone/iPad called Geoshred. After talking with him about it, I figured I would challenge myself to do something, unlike anything I have ever done as a musician. Using Geoshred, there was no pressure to write a verse, chorus, or to make things make sense.

I started to find a method to the madness. I didn’t overthink anything. I didn’t sit down and spend hours structuring parts of music to fit in various places. I just played, and played, and played, and played some more. Some days I spent anywhere from 3-4 hours just creating soundscapes. Then I started picking up my guitar and my bass guitar as well, and suddenly I was making music with no boundaries. There was no stress, no plan, and nobody to please but myself, which I realized is something I haven’t done in a very long time.

Deciding to create the project Ladders to Fire was the most challenging thing I have ever done musically. For the first time, I stepped out of my comfort zone into an area of the void. Ladders to Fire is something from deep inside my mind and my heart. I even believe that some of these songs came to me from a mystical place. I am not sure what or where it is, but the way these songs came to me was magical and unexplained. I found myself in a zone and allowed me to surrender to the flow of the music. I acted as a medium between this cosmic plane where this music resided and the end result of these recordings.

What I aimed to do with Ladders to Fire was to create music to be listened to as a way to escape. Maybe it will be background music. For someone else, it may be meditative. Hell, you may want to get high try to get to “that place.” However, you choose to listen to this album, know that I appreciate it with all my heart that this collection of songs has found its way to you.