I began playing piano at age 6 and then drums at age 10.  I performed in numerous orchestra, band, and musical theater productions throughout my school years.  It seems that music has always been a part of my life even from an early age growing up listening to everything from Beethoven to Belafonte, Motown to Rock & Roll,  Big Band to Jazz, Folk music to Techno-Pop, The Beatles to Blue-eyed Soul, Eagles to ELP, Deep Purple to Sly & Family Stone.  So many genres, bands, styles ... and I liked them all.

JUST US

At age 16 while living in Cleveland, I was recruited by John Goodworth to play drums for the St. Adalbert's Girls Choir, aka Just Us.  A Godspell-like youth choir from the Cleveland suburb of Berea, Just Us was booked multiple times on local Cleveland TV variety shows, including The Jerry Lewis Telethon, Polka Varieties, and The Gene Carroll Show.

The High School GARAGE BAND with no name 

At age 17, my friends and I decided to start a rock band.  Since we were all drummers, we decided that our buddy Dave should be the drummer since he had the coolest kit: a Ludwig double-tom clear acrylic set!  I switched to keyboards/vox and my friend Carl brought his guitar.  We recruited Tommy for lead guitar work and Jim for bass.  We were the epitome of a garage band with our cobbled up equipment and less than polished sound.  I played a Farfisa Combo organ through John Goodworth's borrowed Leslie.  We only played 2 times: once in Dave's basement for his New Year's Eve party and lastly in my parents' living room for my High School graduation party [ LOL emoji goes here].  While we were far from great, our playlist was great:  Paranoid (Black Sabbath), Sweet Lorraine & Easy Livin' (Uriah Heep), Into The Sun (Grand Funk), Rocky Mountain Way (Joe Walsh), Evil Ways (Santana), China Grove (Doobie Bros).  Some of the 1st rock songs I ever learned.  

We thought we were rock stars!

SOLO and Coffehouses  

After high school, I attended college at The University of Toledo ( little did I know I would end up in the Toledo area for the next 40+ years).  While at U of Toledo, I performed solo piano at several campus coffee house concerts and also performed at the piano bar at The Southwyck Lounge in Toledo.   It was the 70's so I played a steady diet of The Beatles, Billy Joel, and Elton John.

Around 1985, after seeing Scott Shaull and Danny Overton perform, I knew I wanted to play in a band with them someday.  We started Miniture Buzzurd and eventually recruited Dave Foreman from Findlay, OH.   The bar owner at our very 1st show misspelled our name on the marquee and of course, much like the story of Lynyrd Skynyrd's name, we decided to keep it misspelled.  We played 70/80's rock and were a solid band and a good draw in NW Ohio from Toledo area to Bowling Green to Lima.  At our peak, we had an extended, busy schedule: 6 weeks of Th,Fri,Sat nights, then 1 week off.  We were together until summer 1990.  Buzzurd reunions have taken place, with Mark Stears taking the bass duties allowing Scott to focus on acoustic and rhythm guitar.  As it turned out, I ended up performing with each of these 4 guys in future bands.

   Classic line-up:  
- Scott Shaull (vox/bass/acousitic),
- Danny Overton (drums),
- Dave Foreman (vox/lead guitar),
- Stevie (vox/keys)
   
other Buzzurds: Mark Stears (Honorary Bass Buzzurd), Tom Jaqua (original guitarist), Russ Wangler (guitar). 

Mark Mikel is one of those rare multi-talented musicians who is skilled at songwriting, studio engineering, playing all musical instruments, and live performance.  His vocals are what Alan Parson has called "Lennon-esq" ... a rare breed for sure.  Mark is good friends with Jeff Kollman and the Edwin Dare family, having written several songs for ED.  I joined Mark in 1994 when he was booked as opening band for Bad Co. at the Toledo Masonic Auditorium and he needed help covering live keyboards.   Soon after, I joined his Mark Mikel Hallucination band full time and while I was in the band from 1994- 1997, I provided keyboard support both in the studio and for live performances.  The MMH live shows included material from his LPs "Marikesh", "Sorghum Pudding", "The Idiot Smiles", "Blatant Ripoffs".  While Mark Mikel's live shows were about his original music, he always like to cover 1 somewhat complex track at each show (just 1) ,.. a deep track that no one else played, like: Yours Is No Disgrace (Yes), Make Me Smile (Chicago), and I'm Just A Singer (Moody Blues).  Mark has gone on to a successful professional career in music, performing as a Toledo favorite and also working with well known professionals, such as Corky Laing (Mountain) and Alan Parsons (AP Project, Pink Floyd, Ambrosia) as well as Jeff Kollman.  On Alan Parson's 2019 LP "The Secret", Mark wrote and performed (along with Jeff Kollman)  a song called Fly To Me. 

Mark is a skilled multi-instrumentalist and often records some if not all of the tracks himself.  Even though Mark is an excellent keyboard player, he and I have different styles.  He liked the way I laid down the organ groove to Going To a Love-in, the first track of "The Idiot Smiles" CD, and it made the cut.  I'm also credited with playing Rhodes on the track, but honestly it was just a piece of ear-candy that Mark came up with.  He told be to play the main riff on the Rhodes, which he had routed through his Wah pedal and a Fuzz box to his Fender guitar amp.  He close-mic'd the distorted amp and I played the riff while he worked the Wah pedal with his hands ... "tiny fingers rubbing your brain ..." about 2:30.

I arrived for a recording session at Mark's studio one day and at some point I shared with with Mark that I had created a new synth program on my VFX.  It was a screaming sawtooth synth I called "Tarkus", because it reminded me of Emerson's synths on the ELP track called Aquatarkus.  I was noodling around with it and Mark, also an ELP fan, liked what I was doing so much that he went to the control booth and started the tape machine recording along with a backing track playing.  I asked "what should I play?".  He said "just play whatever feels right, like what you were doing before [when you were noodling around]."   Mark always liked to have a little ear-candy on his LPs, and my 1-take synth noodling ended up at the end of the LP's final track called Pacificus (Half Man, Half Ocean).  Pacificus is an epic, soaring track on which I had already recorded the piano track and to finish off the song and album in style, Mark added the surprise, ear candy reprise of Bad Mouth.  

Give the whole song a listen because it's still one of my favorite Mark songs.  Go to about 6:00 for the ending and reprise with synth.    

In 1997, I was asked to perform in Findlay, OH at a homecoming concert with former Miniture Buzzurd bandmate Dave Foreman.  Dave was returning home from Florida and a back-up band was put together that included many of Dave's former bandmates including Scott Shaull, Chip McClurkin, Holly McConnell, Tony Cole, and Adam Nation,  The concert was booked at a club in Findlay called Moondoggies owned by Bob Freed (great-nephew of Alan Freed ... yes THE Rock-n-Roll Alan Freed!).   The concert was a success and the band's chemistry was so obvious, that once Dave returned to Florida, the back-up band decided to continue performing ... and Tongue n' Groove was born.  As a founding member and original keyboard player of the band, I performed with Chip and the numerous line-ups in TnG for 12 years until April 2010.    Aside from the original line-up, several of the other musicians I had the privilege to play with were Dave Foreman, Mark Stears, Rob Sexton, Jeff Gaskins and Dr. Ike.   As it turned out, Dr. Ike and I would reunite in 2014 in Big Red Deluxe.

Duo with Scott Shaull

While I was performing in Tongue n' Groove, long time friend and bandmate Scott Shaull invited me to perform with him as a duo.  We performed at the 2003 Findlay Balloon Fest and continued to perform together off-and-on for several years at various venues in the Findlay area.  Scott and I would eventually reunite our SnS duo about 15 years later.   As has happened often in my life of music, while playing with Scott, I met someone I would play with in another time:  Scott's guitarist friend Jerry Natal, who would join my blues band in 2016.  

Somewhere during the Tongue 'n Grove years, I got the itch to play The Blues.  I saw an ad in The Toledo City Paper for a blues band looking for a keyboard player.  The band was Tina Lee & Random Blues and  I guess I passed the audition, because quickly after we met we played a short set at Mickey Finn's on January 28, 2007 for the Black Swamp Blues Society Memphis Send-off Party for winner "Josh Boyd and The VIPs".  They played the closing set and were amazing.  The opening band was a duo called Lucky Brother (Mark Lemont & Tim Oehlers) and they were so good.  The 2006 Lucky Brother CD is still in my rotation.  And as luck would have it, the BSBS vice-President at the time was old friend Greg Harley from my Edwin Dare days!  Small world after all ?  yes. 

In 2008, TLRB headlined a Blues Jam showcase at The Rumpus Room in East Toledo (down the street from Tony Packo's).  It was a cold March night and while we played it snowed ... hard.  We went in with no snow on the ground and came out to 6" of snow and still snowing!  Driving home on a barely-plowed I-75 at 1 in the morning was quite the experience.

With Tina Lee singing lead vocals, TLRB was able to perform many female oriented blues selections from artists like Koko Taylor, Etta James, Bonnie Raitt, Lou Ann Barton, and Debbie Davies.  It was so refreshing to play songs by female artists and it reminded me of how much I enjoyed the first TnG line-up with Holly McConnell where we played many female artist songs.  I enjoyed my short time with TLRB, but decided to leave the band in 2009 to focus on Tongue 'n Groove.   The Blues "itch" was not gone, however, and would catch up with me years later.  And guess what ... Greg Harley would be part of that too.

In 2010, after decades of performing, I was ready for a break.  After leaving Tongue n' Groove in April 2010,  I took a nearly 5 year sabbatical, taking some time off to re-energize my love for music and revisit my musical roots.  During the sabbatical, I was invited twice in 2012 to perform with Jeff Kollman, Mark Mikel, Bob Revels, and others.  While I enjoyed the one-off performances, I quickly returned to my much needed time-off and my musical research.  As it turned out, the break did in fact re-energize me!

In October 2014, former Tongue n' Groove bandmate Dr. Ike contacted me needing a keyboard player for his New Year's Eve show with his current band.  I performed with the band that December 31st and the chemistry of the band was undeniable.  I felt energized and was certain that my sabbatical was now complete.  I was ready to get back into performing.  Fortunately for me, several days later the band invited me to join Big Red Deluxe full time.  

I have been performing with Big Red Deluxe since NYE 2014 and the band has developed into a big draw, festival favorite performing all across North and Central Ohio.  The band often performs with a fan favorite 3-piece horn section called The Groove City Horns.