Welcome and thanks for visiting my website. I’ve been a guitar player for over 35 years beginning lessons with my brother John at age 10. John took me from Mel Bay to Mahavishnu. At age 15 I began private lessons with finger style jazz master Howard Morgen. Howard became my guitar guru for the next 3 years until I left New York to study jazz composition and arranging at Berklee College of Music in Boston. I soon felt that I was progressing faster under Howard’s tutelage and returned to New York. While continuing my study with Howard I enrolled at the Institute of Audio Research in Greenwich Village. After earning my diploma in Multitrack Recording Technology in 1982 I began an internship at the Manhattan jingle house Radio Band of America where I was exposed to the top New York session players and singers. Also during this time John and I were playing in night clubs in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut as The Curtin Brothers. We did tunes by The Everly Brothers, The Beatles, and Chet Atkins style guitar duets.
As The Curtin Brothers act began to expand in personnel we found that we could do a lot better financially by going into the wedding and society act business. We renamed the act The New Yorkestra. In 1984 I won a song parody contest on The Howard Stern Show (then on WNBC afternoon drive time in NY). In 1985 John won the song parody contest and when Howard learned that it was the same band he hired us to record his song parodies for the show. We recorded 3 or 4 for Howard before WNBC fired him. At this time Howard decided to take his show on the road and hired the New Yorkestra for the “Fired Tour”. The name New Yorkestra, however, did not have the shock value that Howard desired for his band so he renamed us Pig Vomit. After the Fired Tour Howard landed a gig with KROCK and continued to plug Pig Vomit making us one of the most sought after acts in New York.
Thanks to the exposure that I was getting from the Stern Show I began getting calls for gigs with some legendary artists. Leslie West, Corky Laing, Larry Coryell, Felix Cavaliere, Levon Helm, Lester Chambers, Phoebe Snow and Jack Bruce to name a few. There are MP3s and video of some of these gigs posted on this website.
I continued playing “full time” until December of 1996. After touring Japan with (a then unknown) Christina Aguilera I decided it was time to start living a more stable lifestyle. In July of 1997 I landed a gig with a communications company and began playing music as a side job. I am currently working with a great band called New York City Swing (check them out in the links section). I live in New York and I’m married to the love of my life, Angela.