6 STRINGS ELECTRIC & CLASSICAL GUITARS, 6 & 12 STRINGS ACOUSTIC GUITARS, MANDOLIN, BACK VOCALS, HUMAN RESOURCES, FINANCE & MARKETING DEPARTMENT, REPAIR TECHNICIAN & BROOM OPERATOR

Biography

At the age of fourteen, I needed something to keep me out of trouble. Like most of the kids, I always wanted to play drums. But, since I didn’t have a place to practice, my parents bought me an acoustic guitar and paid me some courses that I didn’t stick with for very long. I felt in love with the instrument but the academic side of it was really awful. I didn’t want to play The Beatles; I wanted to play some Jimi Hendrix, Kiss and Led Zeppelin. So, very early on, I started playing by ear, jamming with other guitarists and practicing songs at home that I picked off my records collection.

Within a year I discovered Prog bands like Yes, Genesis and Gentle Giant. For four years I tried playing progressive rock on the albums I had before I actually thought I was good enough to play in a band. Then one evening I was in the park with my friends; acoustic guitar in hand, smoking a joint… having a beer… when I met this funny weird guy who said to me: “Hey man, my band is looking for a guitarist!” This was my first band.

At first we played original songs and that permitted me to explore ideas, within a group, for the first time. We did one high school show with original material under the name Atmosphere then. Wanting to play clubs, we started to do some cover songs. We were at the beginning of the 80’s and the only way we would get booked on gigs was by playing “New Wave”. Looking back, I feel it was a depressing musical period for me as I found myself competing to make music for the masses. The keyboard oriented music and the use of drum machines does not appeal to me. The musical industry had lost interest in real music and in Progressive Rock. That period left me devoid of interest, even in playing my guitar.

By the mid 80’s, and a couple of cover bands under my belt, a singer friend and I started an original pop duo project. We did a demo at Radio Canada (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) Studio "A" and a video in a government program for new Canadian artists. We even got airtime at Musique Plus (the Quebec equivalent of “Much Music”). But my heart was not in this music and I never was truly comfortable in the pop music scene. After some introspection, I realized I was doing music for all the wrong reasons.

My roots come from people like Steve Howe, and Eddie Van Halen who inspired me from the time he first busted on the scene. I wanted to have a band that could reflect the style of music I had been developing. The turning point came when I met a friend of an old band mate of mine. He had great musical ideas and needed a bass player for his project of developing a heavy metal band. He approached our singer who was also playing bass at the time. Since our singer didn’t want to break up our duo, I went to the audition also to try out as a guitarist. As soon as the bandleader heard the sound coming out of my amp, I was automatically hired.

This group worked on twelve songs and we did a couple of shows that were great. We even had one song on a Canadian compilation album called Moose Molten Metal II under the band name Rise. But early on, a conflict developed with the singer and soon after the band broke up.

The year was 1987, by then, as I was left without a band. A friend of mine saw an ad in the newspaper for a bass player looking for musicians and more particularly guitar players. I went on an audition that changed my musical destiny. The bass player was Jean-François and this is how we first met. From the moment we started playing together, I felt this was meant to be and we have been playing together ever since.

J-F and I formed our first band together that year and we were playing covers of Rush. We formed numerous bands with various individuals as members came and left, until J-F, Jocelyn, Yves, Francis and I met and formed Hamadryad.

Now, here I am having lived a childhood dream as we completed our first album. I feel very proud of this production because, above all else, I gave my best and who knows what’s next?