The University Life of The Smalrus

My Life

We're into the start of my third year at McGill University in Montréal, Québec, Canada now (fall 2002). The first two years were turning points in my life. From moving into Canada and living in a dorm, to being out on my own in an apartment, it's definitely been quite the growing up experience. It's weird. Every time you go home, you feel just slightly more mature and slightly more a guest in the house that you grew up in. They say university is a time of change for people and that they're the best four years of your life. I'd have to agree. There's been many a trial and tribulation that I've gone through, but in the end, it somehow works itself out I guess. The first two years of university moved me to a new phase in life. There's a lot of ground I lost in those two years at the same time and over the summer sought to change it all. This year I headed back a changed person with a new outlook on life. I came back to the same apartment I was in last year with 2 roommates gone and 3 new ones replacing them.

Living in Montréal has definitely been quite an experience for me, particularly coming from the somewhat conservative background I came out of. It wasn't so much that my hometown was necessarily conservative, but the friends I grew up with weren't into doing anything out-of-the-norm. Montréal became my Amsterdam, and as such, I've adapted to the Québecois lifestyle. I came to Canada with the intentions of leaving my American ethnocentrism behind, and integrating myself into a foreign society. Three years later, there's become a part of me that feels as strongly Canadian as it does American.

Currently, I am majoring in political science (geared either towards European or Arab-Israeli Politics) and minoring in Canadian history at McGill in hopes to get into law school and get my law degree, then specializing in some sort of international music law. The idea of becoming a music lawyer or agent developed, partially out of my love of music and partially because of my involvement with a band from my hometown. To me, music is everything in life. It transcends all borders from race, to religion, to age. It's a simple premise: play a note and you have music. I first took drum lessons in school in the beginning of grade four. However, the big picture in my mind was to play a drum kit- an idea that I still maintain today. :) I hated playing the drum pad and for years, I believed that the reason I stopped drum lessons was because I didn't want to practice anymore. I recently found out it was because I skipped music class. We have a piano in my house back home, and I used to turn the radio on and play on the piano along with the radio. It was then when my parents decided to have me take private piano lessons. So in the middle of that year, I switched to piano. I took lessons until the end of my high school career, spanning four different teachers, but I still never practiced enough. In retrospect, I probably could have been a better piano player after 8 years of lessons, but I was always disillusioned by the fact that I never got to play music that I wanted to play. I appreciate the classics a lot, and I'll listen to classical music, but I also wanted to play popular music and jazz. As I started to learn of a few other friends who could play stuff like Billy Joel or other popular pianists, I was still stuck playing Bach and Mozart. Even in jazz, I never got to play stuff like Miles Davis or Duke Ellington.

At the same time in grade 8, we started to do a little basic guitar in general music class. There were a few guys that were playing stuff like Nirvana and Stone Temple Pilots and all the girls thought they were cool. Even I thought it was cool. So in between the grade 8 and grade 9, I used money I earned from being a Little League Baseball umpire to buy myself a cheap new Montana acoustic guitar. The thing cost me about 100$ and it was my first single major purchase that I earned myself. I remember the first day I had the guitar, my friend Andrew came over to my house, I had bought a book of Hootie and the Blowfish songs, and I just kept trying to read the tab. I must have tried playing that book over and over again, and thus began my love affair with the guitar. But yet, to this day, it still hasn't gotten me girls :-P After a about two years, I decided it was time to make the investment and buy myself an electric guitar. So I went back to Daddys Junky Music and bought a blue Aria Paul Cat and a Peavey Rage 158 amp. I didn't know much about electric guitars, but I knew that the 100$ electric I had bought would suffice until I got better. And it did. By the time grade 12 came around, I was already starting to write a few songs, mainly trying to get emotional stuff out in music. I also found that after 4 years of my Montana guitar, I was needing a new acoustic guitar. The sound on my old guitar was too mute for my liking, I couldnt play the higher frets, and it wasn't electric. So my friend, Sarah, and my parents and I went to Daddy's Junky and I ended up getting the Yamaha FGX-412C electric acoustic. Regrettably, I got rid of the Montana at the same time. To this date though, I still have the Yamaha, and it should last me for a while until I need a new acoustic.

During that year, I was a theatre technician in the high school. So I went into the studio with the permission of my theatre teacher, Mr. Graner, in hopes to come out with an album, Canned Introspection. I got 3 tracks to 3 songs recorded, but the rest of the album never materialized and to this day, it sits on an ADAT tape in my guitar case, waiting to be worked on.

In July of 2001, I decided that my Aria Paul was starting to grow old on me. It was a good starter electric, but I saw a few Les Pauls, and I wanted one of them. So after a while, I had saved some more money and bought myself a black Epiphone Les Paul Standard. It plays like butter and it has an excellent clean sound. I've now used it twice in live performances: once for an open mic at the Equator Coffee Bar in August 2001, and once for an open mic at Peaberry's Cafe in the beginning of January 2002. Eventually, I'm hoping to be able to play a few more open mics, when I can find them in Montréal. This summer, my parents gave me a Yamaha PSR-292 MIDI keyboard for my birthday. It's allowed me to be able to go back to my piano playing roots and develop a little more sophisticated music. Other music gear I use is the Crybaby Wah pedal and the Zoom 505 Series II multieffect processor. My strings of choice are D'addario.

My love for music aside, I've been following this band from my hometown, Rane, around since the summer of '97. The drummer was a senior in my high school when I was a freshmen. He also had the same english teacher as me, Mr. Foley. I also knew the sister of the lead guitarist. The first time I saw them, I was floored. It was an all ages, acoustic show at the Starbucks in Manchester. I came home from that show, and I haven't turned back since. Neither have they. That first show I went to was about 20 or 30 people, tops. But over the last 5 years, I've watched them fill places like the Webster Theatre in Hartford, the Iron Horse in Northhampton, and the House of Blues, in Cambridge, MA. For more info on them, check out my rane page.

Suffice to say, a combination of watching local bands become successful and my own love for music that had me decide that if I wasn't good at playing guitar, then I want to do something with either signing local bands or legally representing them. And so that is how I decided I'd like to do something in Entertainment law.

And now the bland details of my life...

I was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1982 and moved a few times before we hit upon South Windsor, Connecticut. After moving to an international city for university, I look back on my years in South Windsor and still wonder how I was shaped the way I currently am. I've always found that I have been a city person- one who needs the diversity and the dynamicism of the urban lifestyle. While it's true that Montréal may not be like most North American cities, the experience has definitely afforded me the chance to evolve as an individual. Unlike the old days where entertainment could easily be found in watching a cheesy movie, I've found that something as simple as going to a coffeeshop, hanging out at a bar, or shooting pool is just as relaxing as well as socially gratifying. Not to mention, my pool game has drastically improved as a result.