Music takes me places - special places that wouldn’t exist if music didn’t exist. Sometimes I like to think that God invented music so that everyone on earth would have something in common, and musicians are the lucky ones because they make the music.
     Enough of the metaphysical ramblings.  I play for the fun of it, but fun is different for everyone.  I get an emotional high from it.  For me, the feeling of camaraderie is unique:  A small band of people, working in harmony as they create notes and rhythms that stir our emotive soup, each person in sync with the other.  When every member of the band comes together, it just feels right, and I wish the feeling could go on forever.  There’s no conflict or pain in that moment. The universe just opens up and spills its beautiful guts all over me.  The music is IT and my creator is in the room. 
    Enough of the metaphysical ramblings!  This is supposed to be my biography, so here goes:
     I was born in a small bucolic town in Indiana and lived in an even smaller town called Oakland City.  Although I was very young, I have dim memories of the flat farm fields and humid evenings where I lived.  Life was calm.  I was plumb in the middle of the “back 40” and few people were around to disturb the ‘quietude’.  Catching lightning bugs at dusk comes to mind.  Sometimes I still sift through great memories of my parents and grandparents.
     Then I moved.  Then I moved again, and so on and so forth until I found myself in Jakarta, Indonesia.  Wow, what a town!  It was exciting and unnerving all at once.  This wasn’t culture shock - this was a culture enema!
     I know I’m geeking myself here, but there’s this classic Star Trek episode about a planet so densely populated that everyone pretty much has to stand all the time and just trying to move around is difficult (where all the food comes from is anybody’s guess).  Well, Indonesia wasn’t too far off from this, and I’m talking about 1973.  I can’t imagine how many people must be on this island now.
     The roads were jammed with vehicles of many shapes and sizes: three wheelers, motorcycles, microcars - even “Betchas”, which are human-powered carts.  All the buses severely bucked toward the side where their entry doors were, leaning-tower-of-pizza style.  These things were comical, like gigantic undulating clown cars.  People crammed the isles while the bravest of them hung out of the doors by one hand.  How many people can hang out of a single bus door without too many of them falling out?  I know the answer - five.  Bet you didn’t know that.
     When people got off, it never seemed to end – a sea of people coursing out of the exits like bugs from a hole.  I was amazed.  Years later I went to the circus.  A bunch of clowns came out of a clown car.  Big deal!  Everyone clapped but me.
     Travel some if you can.  There’s a whole wide world out there, and the experience is a sure cure for any myopic lifestyle.  You won’t view America the same way again.  But I digress. 
     After Jakarta, my family moved to the little town of Wenatchee (where I still reside with my family).  Jakarta to Wenatchee – I may as well have landed on the moon.  Slowly, I assimilated and became a normal kid again (not) and did normal things like all the other kids (stop laughing guys).  Okay, so maybe I drum to the beat of my own rhythms, but I can’t help it.  I’ve just gotta be me.  Anyway, more on this later.
      I played the trumpet in stage band, orchestra and wind ensemble.  Hey, you’ve got to draw the line somewhere!  Stage band was my favorite, but half the time I was air drumming during rests.  During my high school graduation ceremony, “Sarge” Huber (one of my favorite teachers) spoke thusly of me: “And here’s Brad, who would have been a great trumpet player if he could’ve decided which instrument he really wanted to play”.
     Sarge was right.  Yeah, it stung a little at the time, but he was right.  That’s what I always liked about him – he cut to the heart of it, whatever it was.   Today, if he were still here (God rest his soul) I bet he’d say something like this: “And here’s Brad, who could be a great drummer if he could only decide whether he wants to be a percussionist or a vocalist!”  And he’d be right.
     However, I didn’t decide then and there to learn percussion.  Instead, I quit music, soccer and everything else I used to do and went to college.  Wow, what a trip that was.  I graduated in four years (no really - stop laughing guys) and went to Seattle.  Too many stories and not enough space to go into it here, but suffice to say that my dreams of “making it big” in the city didn’t pan out.  The city chewed me up and spit me out like the idealistic, moralistic, simplistic country @#$%^&* that I really am.
     Back in Wenatchee, I met Randy through Joe (see Randy’s bio).  Mike joined in and Troy completed the band.  I’ve never been the same since.  Much loud noise was made.  Of course we all saw our immense potential, and my lack of formal training didn’t discourage me at all.  After all, I was a musician, right?  Never mind that I had never played anything other than the trumpet! 
     Since then Garey Williams, a consummate drummer with few peers (check out his band Ecstacy In Numbers, you’ll be glad you did) has worked with me off and on through the years.  I can honestly say now that I’m better than bad, but not better than good.  As for my singing, I’d say that out of all the singers I’ve heard, I’m one of them.
     I mentioned above that I’d get back to my “freaky freaky” nature, so here goes.  A good friend once described me as a “closet freak”.   This wasn’t really news to me because I thought I had come out long before she coined the term.  She just pegged it so accurately, that’s all.  You see, my freakishness seems to follow me everywhere, and if you’re a little off center too, you know what I mean.  People will just come right out and tell you before you could ever forget.  I don’t recall ever asking anyone “Am I a FREAK?” but somehow I’ve always known the answer.  Ironically, I think of myself as pretty normal and most everyone else as kinda weird.  Hold on – isn’t that one of the definitions of insanity?
      One day my wife gave me a “normal” test.  Now, the test subject (in this case me) is not made aware that they’re taking a test to determine whether they’re normal or not.  After all, a proper freak doesn’t really need the publicity (unless he’s a rock star) and this knowledge would probably skew the results.  Anyway, the test subject is asked a series of questions, rapid fire, and the typical answer given for the last question is “red hammer”.  My answer?  “Blue wrench”.  Apparently few people pick “blue wrench”.  Go figure.  Like everybody else, maybe I’ll get a T-shirt proclaiming my individuality.
     I keep thinking I may grow out of it, but I hope not.  So far, aging has proven to be no match for my stubborn reluctance to conform.   This iconoclast is gonna go down fighting.   To be fair, the other members of I-Man have their own claims to weirdness too - especially Troy (just look at his bio).  Maybe that’s why we’re all buddies who happen to be in a band called Illustrated Man.