I knew I wanted to be a rock star when I saw Van Halen’s “Jump” for the first time at four years old. That was 1984. I was 16 when I finally got the chance to be a part of a band - I played drums in a pop metal outfit called The Waffle Senate. But I wasn’t that into metal, and I didn’t feel I was able to contribute to the writing of a song on drums. So in 1997 I quit the band and taught myself how to play guitar by playing along to my favorite bands - U2, Garbage, Spacehog and The Smashing Pumpkins. By 1998 I had written and recorded a four-track demo of over a dozen pop/rock songs. I formed another band in the hopes of getting into a studio and recording these compositions, but the whole thing fell apart. By my Sophomore year of college, in fall of 1999, I was ready to just get it done on my own.I spent the next two years of my college tenure recording my debut album in the music lab and in my dorm at St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY. In 2000, both a local radio station and a station in Canada called