All about kidD, a not so brief biography

Biography

Then to Now

All the places I've been

My musijourney started early in my life. As a youth music and entrepreneurship came hand and hand. My father was a Pastor and my mother was the church Pianist. Being the youngest sibling of 4 dynamic kids meant a lot of my early existence was consumed with catching up, keeping up, and surpassing those who went before me. Growing up with music as a second language, outdoor play still accessible to kids without supervision, and video games with brilliant artistry and bold and compelling soundtracks challenging the scope of my imagination, it’s no wonder that at 7 years old, when asked what I’d like to be when I grew up, I told to the teach a Rock Star . At the age of 2 years old I started beating on pots and pans. So much so that my parents decided I should have my own drum set, the paper one, with little durability and less practicality. However, that little drum set would start me on a 40+ year journey to become a unique musician, and prosperous businessman.
1st musical Payday: Although my journey had a few notable moments before this, my most proud moment as a kid playing music came when I was 12 years old, when I was asked to play at a church across town for $$. This was a big deal to a Church of God Sanctified kid, who grew up playing music without the expectation of being paid. They offered me $75.00 to play 1 song; for a lower income family, this was a nicex, and would ultimately change my trajectory as far as business pursuits and also had an impact on my scholastic focus. All that to say, I lost interest in doing it by the conventional way, because $5.15 was the minimum wage at the time so a job making $75 for an hour worth of work looked like magic to a kid.
Where it really started; before the pay day, I was introduced to a larger audience via, church convention called convocations. This is where thousands of people would come to fellowship together, and where musicians and choirs from around the country would come to play and form a mass choir. These moments helped hone my musical ear and changed my perspective on performance and professionalism. I was picked out as one of the more talented musicians in our congregation, and I received a lot national attention helping to accustom me for the bigger stages I would hit later in life.
As a 16-year-old kid, a few of my friends and I made a travelling quartet group that travelled the southern gospel chitterling circuit for a few summers in a row these ended up getting an opportunity to play at the state fair and would also be my first sniff at a true signing deal. Through all of these situations I was able to figure out who my target market was, what I wanted my message to be.
Ultimately, I want to make music, media, and entertainment in general that is authentically me. Instead of genres or styles, I focus on creating and curating music that matches the emotions of the moment. Having grown up with a developmental disability, it was necessary for me to prove that I was as good as everyone else… I was and still am severely dyslexic and have a hard time spelling certain words. This was overcome by chunking and the creation of spelling correction software. Overtime I became accustomed to doing things as everyone else did them. The only exception to this was reading music. I have struggled to read music for as long as music has been a part of my life. My older sisters were both virtuoso pianist who played Beethoven, Stravinsky, Mozart, Bach and more, but I couldn’t read Mary Had a little Lamb fluently and neither could my brother. It’d take me countless failed music courses, frustrating practice sessions, and prematurely ended contract gigs to figure out that my orientation with the world was reversed. At the age of 38 I concluded that my pulse, my downbeat is on my left side contrary to 90% of the global population. I had been overcompensating for a deficient right side not knowing that it was my subordinate side. This realization led me to start practicing with my left hand 100% of the time. I learned to write, play drums, bass, and guitar left-handed; I taught myself to throw, how to jump, how to run, and how to swing a bat left-handed. Despite the many successes and breakthroughs throughout this process, I was still unable to read music. This changed in a private music lesson with Professor Robert Boone where we discovered that I read music from right to left. Once I figured this out for myself vowed to find every kid who has this same issue, and teach them that being different in and of itself is not a handicap.