Dr. Smooth is a nickname given to me by Todd Griswold, a guitarist/bartender that was impressed by my ‘smooth’ playing style.

My music life started in the mid 60’s with a red plastic guitar given to me for Christmas 1966. The next year, I got a steel string folk guitar. I lost interest after a string broke and it was left behind when we moved. There was a radio on nearly all the time playing the hits of the day. It was the late 60’s when I really began listening to the radio and paying attention to the music. The first song that I remember liking was Dizzy by Tommy Roe. The song’s iconic drum beat surely had some influence on me.

I have been playing drums since the mid-seventies. I received drum lessons from my grandmother for Christmas in 1974. I had my first lesson at Belisle Music in Manchester, NH at the original location on Massabesic St.  My father had taken saxophone lessons there in his youth.  My teacher was Shirley Nutting.  I progressed fairly well with the basics and seemed to have some natural rhythmic ability.  What I lacked was discipline to practice. My lessons lasted a little over a year until we moved to VT in the summer of 1976. I managed to play well enough to be in the band at West High School.  I even learned enough trombone to be part of that section as well.  Since then I have  been self-taught, picking up whatever I could as I went along.  I would play along with records and jam with other people whenever possible. My very first “band” was with a couple of guys from school.  We did one “gig” at a St. Anselm’s hockey game as a pep band. Trumpet, clarinet, and drums high up in the bleachers, playing only between the action on the ice.  We played mostly Tijuana Brass type stuff.

I spent a year in Nashville in the late 70’s in an attempt at college. I jammed with a classmate, took a course in audio engineering, worked at a recording studio and had many other adventures. I left Nashville and hitched back to Vermont. I didn’t have drums for a few years but played on other’s sets whenever possible until I could get my own again. My first “professional” band was a four piece band built around Tim Stone, a singer/songwriter and included Claudia Babral on bass and Clint Davis on lead guitar. We did several gigs in the Central Vermont area. This was about 1984. The name of the group was usually Deep Fried or Tim Stone and Friends. We did mostly Light Rock and Folk Rock tunes by bands like The Eagles, America, Linda Ronstadt, etc. Throughout the rest of the eighties I continued to play around the area gathering exposure and experience playing with friends Claudia and Clint as well as sitting in at jams. I began to get noticed and by the end of the eighties was starting to fill-in for other drummers.