Before I could do about anything else, I could build things. It wasn’t by choice, but my dad was a carpenter and as I remember it, daycare for me consisted of building things with scraps of wood on his job sites. As soon as I was old enough to be useful, I was put to work. While my friends were riding their BMX bikes, I was building until the sun went down.

But those years gave me two amazing gifts: First, a strong work ethic that could not be learned in a more powerful way. Also it gave me a skill that I could leverage to make an incredible living in my early twenties. How else could a “kid” buy a 2” 24 track recorder, vintage microphones, and all the rest? While I didn’t have the desire to take up the family business, I was able to use it to develop my recording career.

Later in life I began to really understand why my dad loved it so much. Walking up to a pile of wood in the morning and driving away having built something beautiful and useful is about the best feeling one can have.