THE STORY SO FAR
I should probably start by saying that I’ve never been the guy who can sit down and explain music theory to you.
I know enough guitar to get myself into trouble, and apparently enough to have been writing songs for most of my life.
For me, it was always the words first.
I liked what words could do long before I understood what chords were supposed to do. I liked that you could take something completely ordinary—a place, a person, a memory you hadn’t thought about in twenty years—and put a few words around it until suddenly it felt important again.
The guitar mostly became the thing I used to carry those words around.
And somewhere along the way, all the music I grew up around started finding its way in too.
Reggae was a big part of that. Growing up in Hawaiʻi, that rhythm is just there. In cars. At parties. Coming out of somebody’s garage. Floating across a beach from a radio you can’t quite see.
Then there was the other stuff I loved—the storytellers, the acoustic songs, Americana, folk, soul. Music that didn’t need much decoration because the song underneath it was strong enough to stand there by itself.
Apparently all of that got thrown into the same pot.
So now I make something I’ve been calling Island Soul, mostly because eventually websites make you describe yourself.
It’s part reggae, part Americana, part acoustic storyteller, and probably a few things I haven’t figured out yet.
And honestly, I’m okay with that.
Growing up in Hawaiʻi, reggae never really felt like a genre I discovered. It was just there. Coming through car speakers, playing at backyard parties, drifting out of somebody’s garage. That rhythm became familiar long before I ever thought about making music of my own.
But my taste in music has always wandered around a bit. I loved reggae, but I was just as drawn to acoustic music, folk, Americana, soul especially the songwriters who could tell an entire story with a few chords and the right words. The kind of songs where you could strip almost everything away and there would still be something worth listening to underneath.
I think that's probably what stuck with me most. I was never particularly interested in how complicated a song could be. I liked the ones that felt like somebody was actually trying to tell you something. A story. A memory. A place they missed. Something they probably couldn't figure out how to say any other way.
And then there was reggae, the feel of it more than anything. There's something about a rhythm that can make a heavy thought feel a little lighter. You can write about loss, growing older, missing somebody, or not quite knowing where you belong, and somehow the music still lets a little sunlight through.
I never sat down and decided I was going to combine all of those things. There wasn't a grand plan.
I think when you carry enough different kinds of music around with you for long enough, eventually some of it follows you home.
And somewhere along the way, it started showing up in my songs.
WHERE IT STARTED
HOW I LEARNED
Calling myself self-taught might be giving the teacher a little too much credit.
I learned guitar the way a lot of people probably do one chord at a time, usually because there was a song I wanted to play. I never had much formal training, and music theory and I have maintained a respectful distance from each other for most of my life.
Eventually I learned enough chords to start putting songs together, and once I could do that, I was pretty happy. I’ve always been much more interested in what I could say with a guitar than what I could do with one.
Even now, I joke that I live somewhere around the first three frets. Every once in a while I venture farther down the neck just to see how the other half lives.
But those limitations probably shaped the way I write. When you don’t have a hundred musical tricks to reach for, you learn to pay attention to the things you do have LIKE The rhythm, the melody, the space between things, and especially the words.
I’m still learning. I hope I always am. I just stopped waiting until I knew everything before I gave myself permission to make something.
HOW I WRITE
For me, a song almost always starts with words.
Sometimes it’s a line that shows up out of nowhere. Sometimes it’s something somebody said, a memory I haven’t thought about in years, or just a thought that keeps hanging around longer than it probably should. I’ll write it down, play with it for a while, and see if there’s a song hiding somewhere inside it.
I’ve always loved the way words fit together. Change one word, move a sentence around, leave something unsaid and suddenly the whole feeling can change. That part of songwriting has always fascinated me.
The music usually comes after. I’ll pick up the guitar, find a few chords that feel like they belong underneath the words, and start following them around. There’s not much science involved. Mostly a lot of playing the same four chords over and over until everyone in the house has heard the song whether they wanted to or not.
And I rewrite. A lot.
A line can sit there perfectly happy for three days before I suddenly decide one word is ruining my entire life.
Eventually, though, there’s a moment when the words and the melody stop feeling like two separate things. The song starts sounding like it was always supposed to exist that way.
That’s usually when I know I’ve found it.
Where I Am Now
Right now, I’m getting ready to step back into a studio setting for the first time in a long time. I’ve been writing enough that, somewhere along the way, a collection of songs started looking like an album. If everything goes the way I hope, I’ll have an LP out sometime next year.
But music still has to live alongside everything else. There’s a day job. There’s family. There are responsibilities that don’t disappear just because a melody shows up in my head. So a lot of this season of my life has been about finding space for music or, more accurately, making space for it.
That means getting into the studio. Playing more live. Saying yes to the small gigs and the open mics and the rooms where maybe only a handful of people are listening. Writing whenever I can. Getting a little less comfortable hiding behind a guitar at home and actually putting these songs in front of people.
I don’t really know where all of it leads yet.
For now, I’m just making sure music has a place in my life again.
And this time, I intend to keep it there.
