Fun DMC is made up of a diverse group of musicians who cover a wide array of artists. The remarkable thing about this band is that you can take five different personalities with five very different musical backgrounds and channel that energy into a single idea. On stage we are one unit, bringing you the best in mashups and medleys. However, each member still retains their individual personalities and influences and that often surfaces during each performance. With that said, this is the fifth installment of Fun DMC: A Musical Journey.

I was fortunate enough to be born at a time when some of the most iconic albums ever recorded were released. In 1984 I was five years old and Michael Jackson’s Thriller was all over the radio and eventually MTV. Prince’s Purple Rain was not only a best selling album but a popular film as well. Bruce Springsteen’s Born In The U.S.A. had produced seven top-10 hit singles and practically every song on that album burned itself into my brain by the time I finished Kindergarten. These albums are my earliest recollections of popular music and likely responsible for my eventual love of cinematic song-writing and immense production. Of course I was not without paternal influences as well including Elvis, Johnny Cash, Madonna, and Alabama.

It’s complicated but due in part to certain wrongheaded religious influences, rock n roll wasn’t always welcome in our home. As a result, I kind of lost track of the late ‘80s and most of the ‘90s as far as music was concerned. Still, I managed to occasionally make the most of radio during those moments when what I was listening to wasn’t being monitored. I remember the day my cousin introduced me to two life changing icons of the late ‘80s: the Nintendo Entertainment System and a song called, “Paradise City.” The screeching vocals of Axl Rose and that singable ear-worm of a chorus scared the hell out of me and at the same time, I loved it. I wanted to hear more.

It’s worth noting that I don’t really come from a musical family. In fact, it wasn’t until I was 19 years old that I started seriously exploring the possibilities of the guitar. Throughout my teenage years, I existed on an on-again, off-again diet of ‘90s CCM. Most of the music on the radio was either guitar driven grunge or vocal based pop. During this time the acoustic guitar made a resurgence in popularity with groups like The Gin Blossoms, The Goo Goo Dolls, Sister Hazel, Hootie And The Blowfish. However, it was a double live album by Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds known as Live At Luther College that really opened up to me the full potential of six strings and a box of wood. With its quirky chord voices and even more bizarre scales, Dave and Tim were a sort of gateway drug for me into the as of yet unexplored world of jazz. I began collecting magazines with tablature and searching Netscape Navigator for any information on how to coax more sounds out of my instrument of choice.

After months spent in my room practicing I finally worked up the courage to perform at my church’s talent show. For the next several year I would continue playing guitar, both acoustic and electric, at Sunday morning services as well as youth retreats. It was during this time that I began to learn how to write, create, and improvise. I also began to explore the value of effects pedals. Much of the worship music I was playing at the time was, for better or for worse, highly influenced by U2’s The Edge. Their 1987 album, The Joshua Tree, became a primer on how to tell a story through minimal playing and ambient manipulation. Musically, I would find inspiration from several other British alt-pop/rock guitarists including the frantic attack of Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, the subtlety of Coldplay’s Jonny Buckland, and the fearless aggression of Oasis’ Noel Gallagher.

Through the years as a musician, though I’ve always felt I could hold my own as a guitar player, I knew there was still so much more I could learn as a musician. And so I enrolled in music theory classes at Lincoln Land Community College. Five semesters later, hundreds of pages of part writing hours of music history, under the tutelage of professor and keyboardist extraordinaire, Jane Hartman, I felt like I could finally truly call myself a musician.

So let’s fast forward to today. I play guitar for a dance/pop band. I rap, I sing, I help program tracks. It’s unlike anything I ever dreamed I would be a part of when this journey began. I’ve performed for huge crowds and I’ve played for the bartender. I’ve taken my guitar from Central Illinois to Chicago to Texas to London. However, if I had to highlight a single moment that made this all worth it, I’d like to close out with a story I don’t tell very often. I was in one of the poorest parts of Juarez, Mexico in 2003. Our group was on a tour at an asylum that felt more like a prison than a hospital. I recall our guide telling us not to attempt any contact with any of the “patients” who were locked up behind bars down this dark corridor. He told us they were dangerous and would likely try to hurt us or themselves. The group continued on but something drew me to this darkness. Before I had time to think about it, I uncased my guitar and began to walk down the hall way, stopping at the cell of a woman who was sitting close to the back wall. Initially, I had no idea what to play or if I even should. A couple of hours before we had stopped by an orphanage and I had played some songs for the kids there. And so, in this very dark place I began to gently strum and sing, “Jesus loves me this I know…” After a minute, I saw life fill those hollow eyes as this woman stood to her feet and walked forward until she was mere inches away. As I sang to her, she pushed her hand through the bars where it came to rest on my arm. In another instant she was moving her lips and I could hear her trying to sing along. As the song trailed off, looked up and saw the most beautiful smile light up such a dark place. I squeezed her hand and walked away to catch up with the rest of my group. As I did, it occured to me the gravity of what had just happened. Two human beings, separated by cultures, language, and prison bars, in the unlikeliest of places, had just connected because of music.