I've always felt two things: a constant feeling of embarrassment and a nagging fear. Warranted or not, it's always been there. A feeling of shame when I had done nothing shameful. I know some of the reasons why, but not all of them.

My brother Rob first turned me on to music. I remember the first time I closed my eyes, really listened, and let the music take me somewhere else. It was Iron Maiden's "Run to the Hills" which came out a few years before this moment.

I remember sitting there thinking, Wow. I just went somewhere.

It was almost like I could smell the horses and feel the galloping beneath my feet. I realized at that moment that I didn't have to be here. At least for the duration of a song.

There was a time in the mid to late '80s when people were simultaneously using multiple forms of music media. Most everyone had cassette tapes, CDs, and vinyl records at the same time. I know my friends and I did.

My best friend Sean McLean, as much a brother as anyone could be to me, would trade his vinyl albums with me. One day, I traded my Journey Frontiers album for his Beatles White Album. We would trade back and forth music we didn't know. That was the point.

I know nobody "discovers" The Beatles in the mid to late 80's, but I did.

My parents listened to things like the Oak Ridge Boys. I never heard The Beatles in my house or on the radio stations I was listening to, or even music that sounded anything like them. So, to me, The Beatles were essentially a modern band, even though they had been gone for decades.

I distinctly remember sitting there late at night with my cheap record player/tape player/CD player combination, staring at the record with a spinning picture of an apple at the center. My headphones turned up so loud they were distorting.

I remember thinking, This sounds nothing like the over-produced garbage I'm hearing on contemporary radio.

That was the moment, for better or worse, that my headphones became my shield from the outside world.

It didn't matter if someone was mad at me, someone wanted to beat me up, or a girl laughed at me. I was gone for the 3:07 of the song "Long, Long, Long" from the White Album or any other song I was listening to.

It was a big fuck you to everyone.

You can't get me in here.

I had to know how humans could do that. It was the closest to actual magic that I thought possible.

It wasn't just The Beatles. The White Album was a gateway drug to all kinds of music I wasn't being exposed to: Dylan, Pink Floyd, The Animals, The Sex Pistols, Neil Young, and so on.

At this point, I was 12.

I bought a crude, mismatched drum set from a neighborhood kid named Dave Forgeron and set it up in my room. I still have no idea why my parents agreed to that.

For a kid who spent 99.99% of his life trying to hide out of fear, I really did pick the wrong instrument for that.

I beat the shit out of those things so loudly that you could hear them blocks away. I would play terribly for hours.

Then I had the idea that I wanted to play guitar, too. Just in case, someday, I could somehow record both of them.

I had absolutely no knowledge that multitracking was even a thing.

I would sneak into my older brother Rob's room and strum his guitar for hours, not knowing a single chord, trying to press my fingers against the strings until something sounded good to my ears. Sometimes it did. Most times it didn't.

Looking back, I never had any real desire to play in front of anyone. I still don't. That wasn't why I wanted to make music.

The music was a shelter. The lyrics were my voice.

A safe haven.

An escape.

Still is.

I got better over time. I found an old 1950s book in the house. I'm not sure whose it was. It was completely ripped and yellowed and called something like Mel Bay's Chord Book.

It simply showed pictures of where to put your fingers to make a chord.

That was all I ever needed.

I read that thing like a seminarian reads the Bible. I learned every chord in that book until my fingertips were actually bleeding.

All while trying to hide my security blanket from everyone.

This went on throughout my entire teenage years.

I also would sing during all this but making sure the coast was clear. I would even sing myself to sleep.

Eventually, I got into a college named Northeast College of Communications. Don't look for it. I think it existed for less than a year. I just remember the cheesy slogan "Rock the World".

But they were doing something pretty awesome. Because they were closing, you could enroll at Emerson College and, after some paperwork and a test, transfer to Emerson College with their help.

The entire time I was at NECC, a couple of months, I never set foot in a recording studio. It was all classroom work. To this day, I'm not sure they even had a studio. They said they did, but whatever.

On the third day at Emerson, I found myself standing inside a humming, blinking, air-conditioned professional recording studio.

In front of a recording console that, without exaggeration, cost more than the combined income of every human living in the housing project I had left just a short time ago.

I was in my Mecca. My Solomon's Temple. Eden.

I'll never forget the feeling.

This stupid, dirty, good-for-nothing kid got to touch it.

Sounds dramatic, but that's exactly how I felt.

I thought, There is obviously no way they will ever let me touch this thing.

Well, I was wrong.

I excelled at it.

I was probably annoying about how much I wanted to learn how to record music. Not as a musician, but as an engineer and producer making music.

As a matter of fact, I was almost always the only person in a class who played any kind of musical instrument at all. This wasn't a music school. Sometimes, people don't know there's a difference.

Most of the other kids just wanted to be Puff Daddy, P. Diddy, or whatever he's calling himself these days.

DJ Baby Oil seems fitting now.

I digress.

After college, I didn't want to work for a recording studio emptying wastebaskets, so I built my own recording studio and independent record label called Fallen Angel Records (Picture above is while building the first F.A.R.).

Over the years, I recorded hundreds, if not more than a thousand, bands and artists.

And I did it while never letting most people know that I even played an instrument, let alone that I had taught myself how to create original music. If I did play or sing in front of someone, It was slightly muted in volume and skill. I just wanted the demonstration to stop. I didn't like the attention.

Now I'm older, and I've only recently, within the last year or so, started posting my original songs and covers.

The fear of being ridiculed gets to you. It still gets to me, but the "Fuck it" has become a little stronger in recent days.

I still walk away from the computer after I post a new song or cover. I'm afraid to look back and see the teasing and insults.

But they never came.

I still only care whether I like what I recorded.

That may sound arrogant, but I think it's honesty.

I think when you spend your time thinking about what other people want to hear, you eventually become something else.

An entertainer.

I don't want to be that.

I want to be proud of what I made.

And if someone else likes it, that's even better.

That's really all this is.

One guy, a bunch of instruments, professional recording software, can't read music, and a lifetime of hiding for the duration of a song.

After writing this, I read it and that wave of embarrassment washed over me. See how that works? But, it is the "About Me" section and I'm just being honest. Looks like honesty won the day.

Thanks for reading this nonsense. :)