The Beat Never Left: My Lifetime of Music

I’m recording from the Hard Rock Hotel in Riviera Maya, Mexico, looking out at the ocean and thinking about how weird life is. Murders to Music usually leans hard into the “murders” side, but today I pull the camera back to the other half of the name and tell the story I’ve somehow never told out loud: how drumming became the thread that kept me anchored when life got dark, and how that passion turned into a real-world career in live music and weddings.

It starts in Alaska with oil industry fish fries, sitting near the stage, watching a drummer up close until those players felt like heroes. A mentor shows up, lessons begin, and a cheap first drum set becomes a portal. From soundproofed bedroom walls to learning songs by ear, I talk about the unglamorous work that actually builds a musician. Then the story gets personal: my mom’s crash after hearing “Wipeout,” and the night I played it as she walked into one of my shows, a moment that still lands in my chest years later.

From there, it’s the full ride: theater tech jobs, early gigs, bar-band chaos, church worship that feels more powerful than any stage, and the onstage disaster where my band plays one song and I accidentally play another. I also connect the dots from law enforcement PTSD to launching Streamlined Events and Entertainment, where DJing and MC work flips the script from being present on people’s worst days to helping create their best memories on the dance floor.

If this story hits you, subscribe to Murders to Music, share it with a friend who needs a reset, and leave a review so more people can find the show. What’s the “thread” that keeps you going when everything else gets heavy?

Gift For You!!! Murders to Music will be releasing "SNAPSHOTS" periodcally to keep you entertained throughout the week! Snapshots will be short, concise bonus episodes containing funny stories, tid bits of brilliance and magical moments!!! Give them a listen and keep up on the tea!  

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Transcript

Live From Mexico And Updates

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Murders to Music podcast. So today we are recording the show live from Mexico. We are in Riviera Maya, Mexico, at the Hard Rock Hotel and Resort Riviera Maya. And it is absolutely gorgeous. I've spent the entire morning with the family out at the pool floating. Everybody got along. We were relaxed. It was such an amazing time. But it is Wednesday, and it's the time that I record this show. So right now we are here. We're recording it. I'm looking outside at the beautiful blue ocean and the tourists. And if you hear some stuff in the background, you know it's just the noise of people having fun. It's not the quiet stillness of a studio. It is simply people enjoying their lives. And that's where we're at today. So uh over the last, I don't know, however long, we've been doing this turning point series, right? And you guys have heard from lots of different people. And we have the final episode of the turning point coming up. I promise I'm going to get it to you. It's a lot of fun. I've got a couple great episodes. I hope you guys enjoyed last week. Man, can you imagine being stuck on the ocean for six and a half weeks? As I look out on this ocean, I can't imagine. Like as far as my eye can see, out across this ocean, the horizon, it was farther than that. Where these people were stuck on a little dinghy, two and a half foot, three foot wide by five feet long by four inches tall, and they floated on this dinghy for up to six weeks, seven weeks out on this ocean. And I as I look out at the ocean right now and the white caps breaking and the wind blowing across, like I just couldn't imagine what that was like. If you guys didn't get a chance to listen to last week's episode, go back and give a listen to it. It is a survivor. The gentleman is probably 70-ish years old right now, but he tells a story about being 15 years old, leaving Scotland, sailing around the world with his family on their family yacht that they just bought for this purpose, and then they were attacked by killer whales. The yacht sinks, and he talks about his experience living on the ocean for the next six weeks, seven weeks. So before they were rescued by a Japanese fishing boat. Now, I probably just let the cat out of the bag. I ruined it, punchline, I'm that guy, but sorry. Anyway, go listen to that episode. On today's episode, though, it's been a minute since we've spoken about music, and it's been a minute since we have spoken about kind of the other half of this. We talk about murders all the time, but we haven't spoken about the music half or what that is all about. And right now, I've got a lot going on in my life that is music related. You know, for example, um, we're getting into wedding season. So my weddings and my corporate events are starting to pick up. I've already done a couple this year and they've went flawless. And I'm excited about this next year, this next summer season, because I get to do it with Keegan. And last year we really honed our skills, and this year we're just gonna bring them that much better. And it's gonna, you know, our goal this year is to shave some time off, right? You're always trying to improve those systems, and we want to shave some time off. So that's what we're looking at doing this year during our wedding season. But on top of that, this last week, I got to go to a seminar with a great friend of mine. Now, this guy that I brought with me to the seminar, he he came along, he didn't know what he was getting into, and he is not a drummer. But Todd Zuckerman, the drummer for the band Sticks. Now, you may not be a Sticks fan, but if you're a drummer or a drum fan or you like drums at all, go look up a Todd Zuckerman video on YouTube. The guy is a freaking 10. He is so phenomenal, he's so fluid around the drums, and he offers these things called masterclasses. And the masterclass is it's a very small group, 20 to 30 people come into this class. He has a drum set set up, he plays the drums, he talks to you about different aspects. This week it was how to get creative doing fills and drum solos and kind of the root of that drum solo and how does it build, and how does he get these pretty elaborate fills, which I think is is is pretty awesome. So I got to go to this class, got to listen to a great drummer talk about music and talk about all the people that he's played with, and it was it was so amazing. And I got to bring my friend along with me to that, you know, and he got to experience it, and um, he loves music, he's just never held a set of drumsticks, really. So I got to bring him along, that was a lot of fun. Then I'm talking about music, and I'm here at the Hard Rock Hotel in Riviera Maya. And if you're unfamiliar with that, depending on where you are in the world or the country, the Hard Rock Hotels, it's all about music. The entire place is music themed. If I were a guitar player, I could literally go rent any guitar that I wanted from their little rental museum, bring it to my room with an app, and play guitar in my room. And that is pretty awesome too. So I've got a ton of music going on in my world. But the one thing, when we were at that presentation or that masterclass, if you will, my buddy asked me about getting started playing drums. And I thought, you know what? I've been playing these drums my whole life, and I've never really told the story. And uh, so I told him real quickly, and I said, and he's like, you know, I said I would tell that on the podcast, but I don't think anybody would care. He's like, dude, I would care. I didn't ask. He's like, I think it's fascinating how people get started doing these passions and these things, and then they kind of take over their life, and it becomes a lifelong endeavor, it's a lifelong passion. So that's what I want to talk a little bit about today. I just want to talk about my experience and how this whole thing got started. You know, back when I was probably five years old, six years old, I was living in Alaska. And in Alaska, my dad was uh a pretty prominent figure in the oil industry. And they have these things called the fish fries. And the fish fry was an annual event where they would bring in catfish and they would bring in halibut and different seafood, and they would literally take over somebody's shop. It was Nalco, it's an air and gas company. They would take over their shop and they would fry this fish, and they would have like a southern fried fish, hush puppies, and they would have a ginormous party. And the who's who in the oil industry was there. And it was a great thing that I got to start going to at a very young age. But at that young age, the thing I liked most about them, one is I remember some girl when I was, she was much older than I was. I mean, I'm probably six, and she's probably seven, maybe, and she's I don't know, 15 or 18 at the time, and I thought she was so cute. And then I kind of kept seeing her over the years. That's not what the story's about. The story's about this. They would have live music and they would have a band. And typically, because it's this is southern food, they're gonna have a country band or a classic rock or you know, a southern rock band like that. And I every year I got to just go sit right beside the stage and watch these guys play. And, you know, to me, they were amazing. To me, it was like sitting in front of you picket, the the best concert, your favorite band. And you get to go sit on the side of the stage and watch these guys from 15 feet away. They were absolutely my heroes. And there was a drummer that kept playing year and year again, and his name was Greg, and he saw me watching him, so he'd come talk to me. Well, about the time that I was seven years old, is uh I was at the fish fry and had been there a couple years, and my mom and dad asked Greg, hey, do you give lessons? My son is interested. And Greg's like, Well, I have given lessons, yeah, and I'd be happy to do it. So Greg ended up coming over to my house. And the one thing I asked Greg to bring with me was his hi-hats. I'm like, Can you bring your hi-hats? I think they were so for some reason I was just enamored by the hi-hats. And those are those two symbols that kind of clash together. You typically use your left foot to control them, you know, they're like like an Oreo cookie without the cream filling and they smash together. Two discs is where I was going with the Oreo cookie. Anyway, that's what they're talking about. I don't know why I'm thinking about Oreos right now. Anyway, so Greg would bring over his hi-hats and he'd bring over his snare drum, and he would work with me on snare drum parts. And that is that is the equivalent to watching paint dry or waiting for a pot to boil, to play rudiments tut tut tut tut tut on a snare pad or on a snare drum. Man, seriously, if that's what drumming was all about, I would have quit a long time ago. But for that year, that Christmas, my mom and dad bought me a drum set. And it was my first drum set. You see, there was a this place in Alaska called the Kenai in the city of Kenai, it was the Kenai Mall. And uh there was a drum store in there or a music store in there called the music box, and there was a guy named Ole who used to work in there. And I used to always go to the mall with my aunt because she worked in the mall at a different merchant, and I would go and go to the music box and just spend hours in there walking around looking aimlessly at the drums and cymbals. And for Christmas that year, my mom and dad got me a white drum set, and it was my first drum set. It was very cheap. I mean, and it could have even been cardboard shells for all I know, with some you know, drum heads spring attached to them. Either way, that was my drum set, and I was so happy and proud of it. And then when Greg would come over, he would teach me how to play stuff on the drum set, and that was a lot of fun, but that only lasted, I don't know, less than a year with Greg coming over. And uh I stopped taking lessons. I honestly, I was a kid, I stopped dedicating time and attention and devotion to it. So that is about the time that my dad decided that if I was gonna have a drum set, he needed to soundproof the walls in my room. So he did. He soundproofed the walls in my bedroom, and that is where I got to go and play. And I got to play to any kind of music that I could find. You know, during those days, um, eight-tracks were super popular in our house. We had a lot of eight-tracks, so I got to play to eight-tracks, and or I'm playing eight-tracks to George Burns, you know, he's like a singer-comedian guy, and I'm playing drums to that. And I remember that for my ninth birthday, my dad got me a stereo. And it was one of those stereos like we all had back in, I don't know, let's call this the early 80s, uh, early to mid eighties. One of those stereos, it's a bookshelf stereo. Sits on a bookshelf, you know, it looks like separate components, but they're all just one, a record player on top, dual cassette decks on the bottom, speakers off to the side, you know, and that that is the that's what I got. And it's about the time that CDs came out, and I remember my dad taking me to buy that stereo system, and I was so proud of it. Had a three-band equalizer on it, and I was it was pretty awesome. And I set it up beside my drums. I had a little table there, so it was just off my right side when I'm behind the drums. And my dad bought me my first CD, and my first CD was The Juds, and I don't remember the name of the album, but the the album cover is purple and with like a yellowish champagne-colored center, uh kind of gradient to the center, and then they're you know, the two ladies are sitting on a porch. Um, maybe it was their greatest hits or something. But I remember that was my first CD, and I played that CD over and over and over again, and played the music and played drums to it and learned every song, or at least tried to, you know, and drums you can fake your way through most of them, but and I was listening to other music, Great White, Huey Lewis and the News, the sports album. Um, my mom and dad were part of one of those clubs where they send, you know, for three pennies, they send you 50 CDs. But wait, if you call now, one of those things. So they were a part of that club, and we were getting CDs all the time with like 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s music in them. And uh, well, 80s music was popular then, so it probably wasn't even 80s. I probably just made that up. Probably 50s, 60s, 70s music. Anyway, so that is what I I played a lot to, and I remember the first song that I learned how to play, start to finish, where I'm like, this is almost note for note, the song was Love Potion number nine. And uh still to this day, that song holds a really special place in my heart, and it's still a lot of fun to play because at at this time I'm probably 10 years old, but it's the first song that I truly learned how to play, literally like the record, and that was that was super cool. Growing up, I took every chance that I could to feed this passion that I had. Took every chance. I would go and watch live music. Anytime my parents could find live music, I'd get to go and watch. I would go watch school and band performances at the school. I took music in school, but I didn't really like it. Again, it was that whole studious thing, and I sucked at being a student, so I didn't really care for that. The fish fry. You know, there was even a bar in town called the Rainbow Bar, and it has nothing to do with being gay. It's just the name of the bar. It's when rainbows used to be rainbows. And my there was a country band in there called the Great Alaska Moose Ropers, and I loved this band. My mom and dad would take me there at 10, 11, 12, 13 years old, they would take me into the rainbow bar, and there was the stage, and in front of the stage is a dance floor. But if you're looking at the stage to the right hand side of the stage, there were a couple booths right along the wall. And I used to sit in that booth by myself while my mom and dad and their friends would dance the night away and drink and you know, all that stuff, and they were sitting at a different table, but I'm sitting over there all by myself watching these drummers. And uh there was a drummer in there named Danny, and Danny, uh strange turn of events, ended up going on a couple of dates with my mom several years later after the divorce, but it's not important. Danny had very long hair, he was an older guy at that time. I'm saying, I mean, he's probably in his, I don't know, 40s, 50s at that time. That was old to me. But man, he was a bigger dude, but he was so fluid on those drums, and he could just work his way around that drum kit and then back. And I remember again, just a freaking hero. And um, it was so fun watching and learning and just watching the sticking and what is going on, and that just gave me that passion to go and play some more and just find somebody to play with. So I had to find a band. And at 13 years old, let me go back to the rainbow. So one night I'm sitting at the rainbow and I'm watching Jimmy or I'm watching Danny play, and um, as I'm watching him play, I'm just enamored by him. I'm not paying attention to what my parents are doing, and tonight it's just like it's it's amazing. And then all of a sudden the lights come on, and I'm sitting there and I look around and I'm alone. The bar has literally shut down. My parents are gone, and I'm all I'm like, and this is before cell phones, before a pager. So I'm like, what are we doing? So I go to the bartender, I'm like, hey, uh, my parents left me. Well, where do you think they are? I said, well, they usually go to this restaurant to eat breakfast after they leave here. Hindsight, they were freaking hammered drunk and they were going to get a greasy meal before they drove home. But I'm surprised that I survived. But uh, so they ended up calling that a restaurant and they're like, oh shit, he is there. You know, we left our son, so they had to come back to the rest or back to the bar and get me and take me back, and then we got breakfast and all went home together. So that was pretty exciting. But then at about 13 years old, uh, I started working in the auditoriums at my high school. And that is how I got into the tech world of things. That's how I got into the lighting and the sound production and the front of house engineering. I started working in our theater at our school, and when I got that job, it was actually a paid job. I was getting paid$13 an hour to work these events back in, I don't know, the mid to late 80s at this point. And the cool, or maybe early 90s, I don't know, somewhere in there. Anyway, the cool thing about this is uh I got to work other auditoriums. So I got to work the larger auditoriums in a neighboring city and some in a different city than that. And I got to work with kind of some of the same crew. Well, the crew that I worked with, uh, there's a gentleman named Steve McFarrenn. Steve McFarland at the time was probably in his, I would say, late 30s, maybe 40. His son Trapper, who at the time was about 18 years old. Trapper ended up being the best man at my wedding. He was a good friend of mine growing up. But we all formed a band together because they also played guitars and instruments, and another guy on the crew played bass. So we formed this band. I'm 13 years old at the time, and then the next one is 18, and then mid-20s, and then 40, and then another 40-year-old. And the band is called Generations, and we played everything from uh Stuck in Lodi again to Eric Clapton to Credence Clearwater to the Friends Theme Song, whatever was popular at that time. We played all kinds of music, and it was the first cover band that I was ever really in. At about 14 years old, and I played in this band for several years, and we would go out and gig, and it wasn't just like a garage band, we would actually go out and gig. At 13 years old, I'm playing at the local bars and making money playing music, and it was a lot of fun. As long as I didn't drink and I couldn't hang out inside the bar on breaks, I had to go outside. But this band got to go play and make money, and I got to be a part of it, which was pretty awesome. And we played the origin uh occasional coffee shops as well and stuff. But when I was 14 years old, my mom was uh driving out to work. My mom was a waitress and she had to drive, it was winter time, and she had to drive quite a distance to get to the job where she was working. Well, when she was driving out one morning, she was listening to the song Wipeout. And she told me that when she's listening to the song Wipeout, she's listening to the drum part, and she said, you know, um, she said, I I want to hear you play that for me. I want you to play that song for me. Well, Wipeout wasn't a song that we had in our repertoire at the time. But when my mom is driving to work that morning, listening to Wipeout, um, no pun intended, she wiped out. Somebody crossed the center line and hit my mom, and she broke many, many bones in her body. And she went to the hospital, and uh, I was at school that day, and my mom spends quite a bit of time in the hospital, and then we had to convert our home to basically a hospital room with traction bars and all of this to keep her body still and straight. And she was in just short of a body cast for a long time, and that is when she told me the story about hearing wipeout. So we uh we go on about life, she heals up. I continue playing in this band, and I'm playing at the American Legion one night in Kenai, Alaska, and maybe some of you guys have even been there, maybe somebody in Kenai is listening to this right now, and I was in that little downstairs, gross smelling bar of the American Legion, and I'm playing with my band. My mom is home, she is out of the hospital, she's healed, um, but she has no intentions of coming to my show. Well, as I'm sitting behind the drum set, there's a little window that I can peer out of, and this is a subterranean bar, so it's underground. You gotta go down the stairs to get to it. I can look out the window and see people going up and down the stairs, and I see my mom coming down the stairs, and we're just getting ready to take a break, and everybody is off the stage except me. So I start playing the drum part to wipe out, and um, it was completely unplanned. Where's this coming from? And uh one at a time the other musicians came up and joined me. This is passion, this is passion for music and love of music, is what you're hearing right now. And the other musicians came up and joined me one at a time, and before you know it, and we had never played the song Wipeout together before. And before you know it, we were playing the song Wipeout, and my mom walked in, and uh it was a pretty special moment in my music world. My mom passed away a few years later, and uh you know, but that was a great moment for us. So after that, the passion continued, and I keep doing things, I keep playing in in bands and with different people and performing with different musicians around town and uh started playing at church. You know, I started going to a church there, and honestly, guys, I was really going to church for the girls and to play drums, but I both of them worked out for me, so it's kind of a win-win. So then I start working at the music box, that place where Oli used to work. I start working there, and I start, you know, helping with drums and working in drums, and I start doing installs on professional sound systems for him. And remember that theater tech stuff that I did at the auditorium? I'm still doing that. I did that for a long, long time, like four or five years. Now I'm doing that, I'm getting paid to go out and do these installs and run front-of-house sound for different performance groups and different things like that, which was awesome for me. And that led into me DJing. There was another guy that worked there named Dave Holland. Dave Holland is uh he's a he's a cool dude, and I still keep in touch with him. Dave Holland owned a music uh DJ business called Hellefino Entertainment, like Helifino, but all one word, entertainment, and uh Dave's DJ service, and I got to go DJ for him. So at the age of 16 years old, I'm DJing a ton of weddings. You got to 16-year-old kid DJing weddings at the Princess Lodge and Resort in Cooper Landing, Alaska. This lodge is a thousand dollars a night for a room, and you got a 16-year-old kid DJing it and just killing it as the DJ and doing the MC and the entertaining and keeping people dancing. And I'm DJing a ton of weddings, ton of weddings during those years. And uh I'm DJing high school dances and different stuff like that, and it was just a blast. Again, it's just being saturated with music, it has always been in my world. So then at 18, at 17 years old, um, I end up moving to Arizona, uh kind of spur of the moment. When I get to Arizona, I work for a DJ company in Arizona, and I start DJing weddings, primarily weddings in Arizona, um, and that was called Spin Doctor's DJ Service. But it was shortly after that that I met the woman who is now my wife. And we got married. I got married at 20 years old, moved back to Alaska. Well, between getting married at like 20 years old, let's say 19 is when she and I met, I started playing drums in church. And playing for God and worshiping in church is unlike any experience I've ever had. It is so much more powerful than playing in a bar for a bunch of drunks. You know, when I'm sitting behind my drum throne and I'm worshiping God behind the drums with other like-minded community and band members, it is I can't even describe it is a direct connect to God in worship and in passion and in love in that moment. And it is so amazing. I have always said that if I could quit, if if I had an opportunity to go play drums and worship music full time and be able to support my family, I would quit whatever job, including being a police officer, to go do that. That is how powerful those moments are. And it's not about hitting the licks on the drums, it's not about catching the fill. It is about the direct connect and communication, worshiping God in that moment. And it is so amazing. And bringing other people to worship and bringing other people to tears and letting the Holy Spirit move through that room through our musicianship is so freaking amazing, and I love it. So that's when I started playing in church. But now I moved back to Alaska to become a police officer. And in Alaska, I continue playing in church. I've played in church the entire time that I was up there. I played with different groups and different people here and there. Didn't have a ton of bands going on when I was in Alaska, but I played in church the entire time. Then I moved down to the Portland, Oregon area in Vancouver, Washington in 2010. That is when I got back into the band scene. So I got back into the band scene and I and I formed a band called East on 14. And it didn't have that name in the beginning because I had to name it after I found the people, right? But as I'm looking around for folks that I can put into a band and play music with. Now you gotta understand, 2010, I'm brand new to the Portland, Oregon area. I'm brand new to Vancouver, Washington, and camps. I don't know anybody around except some people that I go to church with. Well, a gentleman I go to church with, his name's Jesse. Jesse's a super cool dude, and uh we're still in life group together. We do life together and we have since 2010. Well, Jesse is a singer, and uh he's like, dude, I can sing and I can play sacks, and before you know it, we're on Craigslist and we're trying to find people there. Craigslist seemed to be the place that I would always go to find musicians, and sometimes it would pan out, and we found a great keyboard player, and we found a great guitar player, a gentleman named Ryan, and it was myself and Jesse and a bass player. They would come and go, but we found some bass players there, and we put together a band called East on 14, and the band got its name because a lot of us lived out east on Highway 14, and it just seemed like it would fit, and that's where our practice space was and everything else. So East on 14 was around for about three years. We played a lot of shows, and uh it was a lot of fun. And the nice thing about East on 14, I will and I'll say this, even with my current band, East on 14 was tighter, sharper, and I don't say better musicianship, but definitely uh we were very, very tight, and even more so than where I'm at today. Uh, I'm having a lot more fun today because, well, I'm just blessed to be where I am and I'm happy to be alive. And back then I really wanted to die, literally. So um I'm in a better place now. But the music on East on 14 was a lot of fun, and there's two events that really, really stick out. One, we got we got asked to play for Logitech or Ultimate Ears. They do a thing called Sand in the City, and Sand in the City is where they truck in dump trucks upon dump trucks of sand into downtown Portland, and they build these major sandcastles. Well, they have a full stage and they have bands that come through and rotate. Well, we were the headlining band for that event. And people are there's probably 1,500 people in this amphitheater in Portland, and there's you know, live music, that would be us, and there were these sandcastles, that would be them. And we played the show and we were rocking the show, you know, and we did a Tom Petty song, and I remember a Tom Petty band came on after us, and they played the same song we did, and we're like, we totally kicked their butts. We were so much better than them. And they were like full-time Tom Petty band, but not about bragging, here's what it is about. I can't brag about this. Probably the most humiliating moment of my drumming career, if you will. We're playing The Sand in the City headlining band. We are the it's the last song, and the song is supposed to be uh Wild Nights by John Mellencamp. And if you're familiar with that song, there's a very prominent bass line and a prominent drum line, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom. And it's about, I don't know, eighty-six beats per minute, something like that. Well, in my head, the song that I had was Super Freak. Super Freak is 130-something beats per minute, and it's a completely different song. So I count the song off, and about the time that I get done counting the song off, I click in one, two, three, and about three is where my mind went blank, and I couldn't remember the song we were gonna play. I definitely couldn't remember how to play it. I barely knew my own name, but there's the fourth click, and we're into a downbeat. Well, the only thing I could come up with was the groove for Super Freak. So I start playing Super Freak at 132 beats per minute. They all start playing Wild Knights at about 86 beats per minute, two completely different songs. It is literally a train wreck, and they're all looking at me and they're like, Wild nights, not you know, and they're trying to give me the downbeat and the count, and I my mind is going a thousand miles an hour and it's like scrambled eggs. And uh remember the brain, the brain on drugs, don't do it, shh, and the sizzling eggs. That's what my brain felt like that day. And I couldn't, for the life of me, wrap my mind around the right song, and then we played the song. I played the wrong song the entire time. It was two songs on it was like the first mashup in in human history, and uh anyway, so that was that. And then the second experience with that band was the last experience. So that band, um, we ended up breaking up. Some people were moving away, and some different things happened with some of the personalities in the band. And the last event we played was a wedding, and we got to this wedding through a friend of a friend, and it's out in the country, out in Camas, up in the hills, and it's a wedding for a couple that I've never met before. So I go meet him and I meet the dude, and he's a he's a pretty cool guy, he's just a little bit older than me. Great guy. They're both on their second marriages or something, and they're gonna get married. So we negotiate the deal. They're like, hey, your wife knows some people here. Why don't you guys why don't you bring your wife? And I typically wouldn't, but at that event I knew it was gonna be our last event as East on 14. And Easton 14 and the band members had been a big part of my family, and uh grew up my kids grew up around them and all of that. So I'm like, well, why not? So I bring my wife and we go play this wedding, and it's a phenomenal event. It's a great wedding, we had a great time, and uh, my wife was there, and as she always does, she meets there's not a stranger in the room, and she ends up helping everybody and videotaping and doing things for people, and those two Michael and Gina, they became some of our best friends, and we now live six minutes away from them, and we've done life together since 2014, which has been pretty cool. So I'm totally blessed. That band gave me a friendship that I would have never had, which is pretty awesome. But when that band broke up, I joined a band that was already established and had been since 2009, and that band was called Laura Mims Band. And Laura Mims is a phenomenal singer, but she's deaf in one ear, which is really cool. But she has got great pitch, she sings really, really well, and we did a lot of country, a lot of blues, a lot of southern rock type stuff. It was a four-piece band, and it was great, and that lasted a couple of years. We played lots of shows. One year I think we gigged almost every weekend, uh, and it was it was a lot of fun. And then that band fell apart, as as some bands do. That band fell apart, and then I started in a band called Lucky Day. Lucky Day was a very similar band, but they also covered some more 80s pop. They were your true cover band, your wedding cover band. Lucky Day, uh, that imploded after about a year of me being there. That leaves us to 2017-ish. 2017, I'm without a band, but I'd been playing in church this whole time. And there was a dude that I played with in church named um Jeff. Jeff is a bass player, that's what I knew him as. And I'm playing drums with every time we got together and Jeff was on bass and I was on drums, it turned into some funk, right? I mean, we got funky, it was a lot of fun. And the the, you know, when the drummer and the bass player lock in together and they find that pocket and that groove, everything works. And it just lays the carpet and foundation for everything else in that room to stack upon it. Well, I only knew Jeff as two things: one, a bass player, and two, the happiest guy that I've ever met in my life. Like, I, you know, and in the beginning, I thought it was fake because I was very judgmental and very um uh well, I didn't trust a lot. And this guy, literally, I've known Jeff now for many, many years, and I've never seen the man had a bad have a bad day. But Jeff and I were playing in church together. That church imploded because of some uh some issues that were going on with the pastor. So Jeff and I went our separate directions, but now this brings us to 2017, and I'm like, Jeff, I said, What are your thoughts on starting like a power trio with us? You play bass, I play drums, and we find somebody to play guitar. He's like, All right. So we go to the drawing board and we determine what it is we want to do. We want to play stuff Cat Stevens, Eric Clapton, Lionel Ritchie, Eagles through top 40, and we want to be able to hit all the different genres. We want to hear country, we want rock, we want southern rock, we want classic rock, we want um, you know, funk, we want even some tone loke in there, you know, a little bit of hip hop rap in there. We want to be able to hit all these things. So I throw an ad out on Craigslist and I'm like, hey, this is when Craigslist used to be a thing, you know. I said, Hey, I'm looking for a guitar player, and we would audition these guitar players, they'd come through and just nobody really fit. And one day he's like, Aaron, he's like, You know that I play guitar and sing, right? And I'm like, I don't. And I'm in the back of my mind, honestly, I'm like, man, you're a bass player, let's just stay in our lane, right? But uh, so he's like, let me bring a guitar and let me just let's just try it. So we sit down and I'm sitting on a cajon, and he breaks out the acoustic and a mic in front of his mouth, and he starts playing Change the World by Eric Clapton. And by about the third or fourth bar into it, I had found my guitar player, and I'm like, This works. So we knocked that song out, and that was the first song that he and I played together, and that became the beginning of Double Down, my current band. So Jeff and I play that was in 2018. We played our first show August 25th, 2018, and uh we played a lot of shows, and then one year later there was a big celebration going on, and the people asked us if we could put together a full band for their celebration, like other instrumentation, and you know, instead of it being acoustic duo, have it plugged in. So I did, and we then dubbed that double down wired and double down unplugged. So, depending on which version we were bringing to the table. So I was able to go through and hand select some beautiful musicians that I that Jeff and I had played with throughout our experiences at church. And I got Mr. Michael Key on electric guitar, I got Mr. Mike Coblence on bass guitar, and we've had some singers come and go, but we've been primarily been a four-piece band. So we put that together the four-piece, five-piece band for that party the next year, and that became Double Down Wired. Now it is now 2026, and we are still playing music together. Over the years that we've been playing, we've played hundreds of shows together, everything from funerals to corporate events to wine bars to clubs. We've played a little bit of everything. We've entertained along the way, and we have just allowed people to enjoy good music. The nice thing about it is that we all have our origin in church. So if you've been in a band, if you're a musician out there listening to this, you can relate when I say, you know, there's a there's a sliding scale between being a good musician and being a good human that can interact and get along with the other bandmates, right? There's a lot of drama in bands sometimes. And I would take somebody that can really get along with others and be a mediocre musician rather than the opposite. In this case, everybody is a great musician and they all get along because we all started playing in church together. There's no ego, we just want to come together, make good music, break bread, have our families intermix and mingle, and just throw out good stuff. We pray for each other. We sometimes we'll even throw worship songs into our sets. Um, people love it, people respond, people want to hear that, and it's pretty amazing. So I'm just so passionate and excited about still being able to play music with my friends, you know. And over the years, there's been hundreds of musicians that I've played with over the years, uh, not maybe not hundreds, maybe a hundred musicians that I've played with over the years. Um, and those are all still good people, right? Those are great people along the way. And each each person I play with, I get to learn something from, and it ups my game a little bit more. But man, where I'm at right now is a core group of solid human beings. And will it last this way forever? No, it won't. You know, people will age out, people will get tired, people will move, and I get it. I totally understand that. But where God has us right now is pretty amazing, and I will keep going and doing what we're doing right now. That leads me to opening streamlined events and entertainment coming out of my law enforcement career. So, my entire law enforcement career, I had this live music thread, and I had DJ'd many years earlier, but I couldn't take time to DJ because I knew how much time and energy went into weddings. So in 2022, when I came out of law enforcement, during that first year, 22 to 23, I was out on medical leave. I started shadowing another uh DJ named Justin Babbitt with Paradox Productions. And Justin is actually gonna be on the show in a few weeks, and you'll get to hear his story. Uh, he brings, you know, he went from a life of darkness to populating dance floors, and you're gonna hear all that story. But I started shadowing Justin for about a year and a half, and during that year and a half, I'm deciding, am I gonna work for Justin or am I gonna open up my own business? And Justin was aware of my contemplation. And at the end of the day, I came out, opened my own business, streamlined events and entertainment. And the thing that Justin said to me during our time together that really struck and kind of struck a chord and was really kind of a mantra for me. Justin also suffers with some PTSD from the military. I suffer PTSD from law enforcement. And he said, Aaron, he says, we are both people that want to help others. Whether it's on a whether it's on a battlefield or whether it's on the battlefield of you know downtown Portland and you're on the streets fighting with somebody, at the end of the day, we don't do those things because we enjoy them. We do them because we have a passion for wanting to help other people. And I took that. My passion forever had been helping people on their worst days. The days that nobody listening to this wants to have the phone ring or send their daughter or their son off to the store to get a gallon of milk, and then two police officers pull up in the driveway 15 minutes later to give you the worst news of your life. Well, that was my life. I was those two police officers. Every time I called somebody, it was to give them the worst news of their life. Or if I went to their house and sat on their front kitchen table with them, it was to deliver the worst news of their life. I was so many people's worst memories, or at least a part of their worst day. DJing, playing music, working weddings flips the script. Now I get to be a part of people's best days. On the days that they're gonna make the best memories, the only time that that certain groups of distinguished guests and friends and family are together at one time in one place celebrating love for that couple. I get to be the person to put the soundtrack behind the day. I get to be the person to help that day flow. I get to be the person that takes all of the attention to detail and the skills and the people skills and the reading people and all that stuff that I learned in my dark days. I now get to use all that stuff on their brightest day to help just knock their event out of the park, to give them a wedding experience, at least on the entertainment side, that they will never soon forget. You know, we've all been to weddings and some of them suck and some of them are good. If you notice, the theme with the ones that are good is there's been continuity, there's been flow, there's been direction, the music has been there. And my job is to enhance somebody's experience at that wedding, your experience at that wedding, the random guest, the five-year-old, when I play Baby Shark and they get on the dance floor and dance. It's my job to enhance that experience for that couple and to make their day the best that it can. And I am so blessed to have opened up streamlined events and entertainment and helping dozens and dozens of couples celebrate love in such a special way. That is what I'm doing now. That is the Murders to Music story, and that is the musical thread from beginning to end that has kept me passionate and going all this many years. You can hear the passion, especially when I'm talking about my mom, and I don't know how that hit me, because man, I've told that story a bunch. Um, but you can hear that, and it's just so amazing to be blessed with such a talent from God and a skill set to be able to give back to others and use it in such a positive and blessing way. Ladies and gentlemen, that is all about my music. That is all about screening. That is all about Aaron Turnage and the thread that has kept him alive through so many dark times in my life. It has been the musical thread that has kept me anchored and centered. I hope you have enjoyed this show. I hope you have enjoyed the Murder Two of this podcast. Please keep it. Share it with your friends, you guys. As I look outside of the beautiful sunny weather and the beautiful ocean, I am just blessed to be alive and I am blessed to have each one of you guys in my corner. Ladies and gentlemen, I love you. I love you, I love you. That is a Murder's Toons Podcast.