:: PROFILE | GEAR | LIFE | PHILOSOPHY Born in a small village in the Austrian mountains, sports was predominant in my life until the age of 15. I really sucked in football and left that to my brother Alex, but I was quite successful in cross-country skiing: I won the Tyrolean championship as well as the Austrian and the Transalpine championship (Bavaria, Tyrol, Alto Adige). As a child I was surrounded by Austrian folk music made by my father. I also tried the accordion at the age of 9 to 12 but was not very enthusiastic about it. By the age of 14 I found out that rock ´n roll and girls are great things and soon after gave up my “sports career“ to become a rockstar. My parents – probably not too happy about my new musical style and goals in the beginning – supported me nevertheless in every way they could. My first inspiration to play electric guitar was Kurt Cobain and the local guitar-hero Murx. I had lessons with Mark Maier who taught me a lot about the appropriate spirit and style. I also found out soon, that soloing and practicing scales was not really my kind of thing. I tried to be an overall musician by playing guitar, piano, singing, song writing and playing the drums. In my first band projects I was lead-singer and guitarist. We played many Nirvana songs and our own material. We changed names several times, but the heart of all bands was my very good friend Andreas Harasser and myself. The two of us played most of the gigs from 1997 to 2000 and had a lot of fun with making the first stage-experiences. The two main bands of this time – Hangover and Secret Mind – I´m still quite proud of. After concentrating on song writing inspired by Nirvana, Beatles and R.E.M. I discovered more groove dominated music as my new passion with bands like Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rage Against the Machine, Tower of Power, and so on. Singing began to play a less important role after the guitar and I formed the first band with my soul mate and bass player Totshay, called „Funkophil“. Long before the band existed, Totshay and I met to share our funky spirit – either by making music or in one of our favourite bars. In wintertime, I spent most of the time snowboarding and looking for some lovely powder. In February 2001 I had a very bad accident where I broke two bones of my spine. I was forced to stay home in bed and so I played a lot of guitar lying on my back. Unsure of what to do in my life I started to learn classical guitar with Fritz Koch. The same autumn I managed to pass the tough assessment at the “University Mozarteum” where I began to study “Musical Education” and soon after “Musical Education - Instruments” (guitar and singing) – both courses focused on classical music of course. As a consequence, I was lucky to join the Landesmusikschule St. Johann as a part-time teacher in February 2004. In the past years I taught electric and classical guitar, bass, vocals and choir-singing with lots of passion and fun. It was the bass player Totshay that joined the great Austrian Crossover/Rap/Rock-band “Schneiderberg” together with me as a guitarist. Actually, I had already been a big fan of the band before I joined it in 2002 and therefore, was very proud to be part of it. The drummer N.W. taught me how to play tight and how to discover my own unique style and feeling as a guitarist. My role was a mixture of rhythm-guitarist and weird sound generator. Schneiderberg was the most enjoyable and musically exciting band I´d been part of up to that time. Besides many club-gigs, we played a lot of big festivals in Austria along with bands like Placebo, Queens of the Stone Age, Amplifier, Kosheen, Juliette and the Licks, NOFX, and many more. We had a record deal and recorded a very cool album called “Amok-Yo”. In December 2005 I left Schneiderberg to focus on my new musical goals. After years of playing with a great bass player I wanted to become one myself! I also wanted to be surrounded by more professional musicians who dedicate everything in their lives to art. The group around Lurz, Manu Delago and the whole Propolis crew in Innsbruck was very inspiring. I was also looking for a more open sound that was less overshadowed by the Hard-Rock attitude of the last years. As a very inexperienced bass player I thought that a coverband was the right thing for me to learn how to tread safely in many different styles. My former guitar teacher Mark had also become a bass player in the meantime and funnily enough I suddenly had to fill his footsteps with the big showband “TNG”. Within 10 days I had to learn more than 80 songs for the first gig-weekend where we played a big party for 2000 crazy people in Switzerland. From the beginning of 2006 until mid 2007 I played about 150 gigs with this band and other related bands. I gained a lot of experience and self-consciousness as a bass player and singer. The drummer Alex has a solid timing and good groove and helped me to get a more laid-back feeling – a development that was very important for me at that time. Apart from that I found some very good friends! I left TNG in summer 2007 and around that time, in spring 2007 I got the great chance to join the band of Austrian casting show winner Nadine. She is an incredible singer of age 17 and playing in that band was big fun and musically rewarding. I got to know a lot of new people of the Austrian music scene, like the great bass player Willi Langer who dedicated a whole day in teaching me in a sort of “masterclass” and was my first and only bass teacher so far. Apart from playing bass and singing backing vocals, I took over the part of band leader and also sometimes road manager where I was able to learn a lot about the business and acquired useful management skills. After 1 ½ years of maybe too many coverband gigs I began to spend a lot of time with practicing and songwriting in summer 2007. Since then I have been very busy with different new projects and my own stuff (So Seven). I enjoy playing with lots of different musicians in lots of different styles, learning new songs, rehearsing, jamming and making music instead of only reproducing music. November 2007