Highlight Reel
Nominated for Country Single of the Year – 20th Annual LA Music Awards “Podium”
How it Started
I lived in Honduras for three years playing music 5 nights a week in a nightclub down there. I was responsible for rocking out a rotating tourist community of backpackers and party animals. But I could never really keep a band together due to the rotating element, so I started to design methods for entertaining people all by myself. Once I returned to America, I had a hard time searching for band members and people I wanted to perform with, so I kept the solo thing going. I started researching and purchasing equipment to add unique sounds and textures to my presence, using beat boxing and refined vocal techniques to create rhythms and drum sounds through a loop pedal, and layering in guitars and harmonies to create a full band effect. Now I have been touring and performing all over the nation with the act I am calling “One Man Banned.”
The Music
I have listened to so many different types and styles of music throughout my life and loved all of it. It has all changed my life and helped me through so many rough times, so when I write, those sounds and styles bleed through into my creative world naturally. One Man Banned is all over the map. I have actually had quite the challenge trying to describe the sound or assign genre descriptions for it because it really does cover grooves, feels, moods, sounds, and tempos from all the music I have ever loved in my life. I realized that when I am listening to a playlist of music I want to hear, it is never one style that I stick to or feel like listening to. I want a rock song first, then an old Buck Owens tune, then throw me a little De La Soul followed by some sick Jon Williams strings or a little Mr. Bungle. So like my brain, my music is always changing. I will get into phases of writing genre specific styles, always evolved far from them, and then come full circle back to that sound again covering a wide range of musical influence.
I released an album in 09 called “One Man Banned” featuring songs written and performed in this live looping format. Some of the songs were written only for the album, but most of it is similar to how I perform live. Everything on the first album was created with only vocals and an acoustic guitar. Sometimes I would scream through a bullhorn to create an old Beastie Boys type of sound. I use a lot of the sounds I used to make when I was a kid playing cops and robbers trying to recreate guns and lasers. That is where most of the weird vocal stuff stemmed from.
The Live Show
I have put together a crew of stage technicians and designers that I have become good friends with working in the industry as a professional sound engineer. We have all got together and designed an amazing light show that I bring out with me when I am performing locally. I am always trying to give people a combination of theatrical and rock and roll sights and sounds when they come out for a performance. We have been known to bring in huge risers, moving lights, lasers, confetti, characters dancing in costume, and sometimes I throw out bags full of fun toys and crazy stuff I have picked up around town. I sometimes smash wine glasses into a mic’ed garbage can and build loops out of it. Recently I have incorporated edited sounds from weird movies and audio samples that play in between my songs. Over all it is a pretty crazy show to see.