At 19 years old, I decided to continue my music while going to college. This allowed me to continue pursuing by musical goals while constructing a backup plan in case I never made it as a musician. There was a problem. This was back in the days where if you wanted to "make it", you probably had to move to Los Angeles for your best shot. This did not sound good for many reasons. I had heard all the stories about six guys living in a one-bedroom apartment in Hollywood trying to get signed. No thanks. Still, I realized I wasn’t likely to get discovered in Colorado Springs, but I was an ambitious guy.

A friend of mine had some good connections in the industry and she was kind enough to put me in touch with an agent in Los Angeles. I sent them a promo pack. They liked it and signed me to their agency as a hired gun. Over the next year or so, they got my promo pack to a number of decent sized bands. I almost flew out to L.A. to audition for Lita Ford, and I recorded two tracks for a guy named Lenny Wolfe. He was looking for a bassist for his band Kingdom Come. My demo was also presented to King Diamond, and possibly to The Cult. In the end, nothing quite panned out. I now realize that at nineteen years old, I probably did not have a great chance of being hired by an internationally known band. Still, I learned a lot about the art of self-promotion.

Here’s another story. When I was 20, I was still looking for a band when I received a call from a guy named Marc Ferrari. He had previously been the guitar player for a band called Keel. They were awesome and quite successful on the international hard rock scene. His new band was called Cold Sweat and they were signed to MCA Records. He was looking for a bass player and had heard my demo tape. This was very cool because he was established in the industry, had a record deal and was actually calling me (instead of the other way around). As it turned out, the opportunity with Cold Sweat disappeared as quickly as it came up. Marc got an offer to be the guitar player in the movie "Wayne's World" and that put everything on hold.

By this time I was getting tired of not being in a band. For years, I had been spending a lot of time studying and practicing bass, so my playing was developing nicely. I had also started learning the guitar and writing some songs. I needed to start playing with other musicians. The problem was that there were no decent bands in town looking for a bassist. The solution, of course, was to start my own band. This resulted in the band Trip Romeo.