The person behind the night.
I have been a musician my whole life. Before I could read, I was picking out melodies on the piano by ear, memorizing songs I had heard once. I didn’t learn music so much as absorb it — by listening, by playing, by being in rooms where it was happening.
In my twenties I toured the East Coast with my band Stealing Jane. We built something real — a following, a sound, a sense of what it meant to hold a room. Then I tried out for American Idol. I made it to Hollywood, top 90, in Season 9 — the last season with Simon Cowell. It was a year of my life in a holding pattern, and it changed me more than I expected.
That’s the work that has shaped everything since. Through the Stanislavski method — the same approach serious actors use — I learned how to find a true emotional connection to a lyric, even one that has nothing to do with my life. It’s why I don’t get tired of the songs. They feel real every time, because I make them real every time.
I teach music at the middle and high school level — music production, West African drumming, general music. Teaching has made me a better listener, a better reader of rooms, and a better bandleader. When you spend enough time figuring out how to make something land for a room full of thirteen-year-olds, performing for a wedding crowd starts to feel like a gift.
My first time in New Orleans changed something in me. The line between performer and audience doesn’t really exist down there. People aren’t standing with their arms crossed waiting to be impressed. They’re clapping, singing, dancing — they’re part of making the music. That’s what I grew up wanting to create.
I’ve always been drawn to West African music, Caribbean music, the Tuesday night bar sets where the band made every stranger in the room feel like they belonged. That sense of community is what I’m chasing at every event I play.
When I meet a new client, I don’t ask what music they like. I ask where they went to college, what their favorite party was, what kind of people their friends are. I’m trying to understand who they are, not build a playlist. From there I can figure out the right musicians, the right arc, the right moments. The music comes last — after I understand the people.
I’m not the best guitarist in any room I play. I’m probably not the best singer either. But I know how to find the feeling inside a song and put it in the room. And I’ve spent twenty years building a network of musicians around me who fill every gap — technically, emotionally, stylistically — so that whatever a night needs, we have it.
