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“It takes years to learn how to play like yourself”. I was six years old the first time I walked into a recording studio. I instantly felt at home. Growing up in Toronto, a diverse, multicultural city, in a family that was itself diverse, I was exposed to all kinds of music, regardless of genre. The summer I turned sixteen, I met Canadian guitar legend Jeff Healey. Aside from introducing me to a whole slew of new musical influences that I immediately became obsessed with — Stevie Ray Vaughan, Buddy Guy, Bonnie Raitt, Chris Whitley, on and on — I started playing music professionally after that. I got a record deal that my parents had to co-sign because I wasn’t old enough. My self-titled debut album was released (Epic/Sony). It went on to become one of only eighteen albums in Canadian history to achieve Diamond status, and achieved Gold or Platinum status in fifteen countries. The next two albums, Tuesday’s Child (1999) and Everybody’s Got A Story (2001), both multi-platinum, were no slouches, either. Music has taken me around the world. I wound up meeting, recording and performing with many of the folks whose work lived on those shelves in my parents’ living room during my formative years. It was humbling and exciting; I picked their brains and tried to learn as much as I could during each collaboration. “It takes years to learn how to play like yourself”. I’m getting there.
