Having played drums my life and having drawn and painted all my life, I guess it's only natural that I would one day combine the two. It started about seven years ago. I was playing in a band in Houston and working in a local drum shop. I had with me one of the drums that I'd painted when the drum tech for Guns 'N' Roses came in. He saw my drum and asked if I would be interested in painting some drums for Guns 'N' Roses and I thought, "Sure." A few months later two drum kits showed up at my door. At that time, I had never used an airbrush. Fortunately, those drum kits didn't call for any airbrushing, but I knew I wanted to learn, so I got a cheap single-action airbrush and painted skulls on a guitar the first afternoon that I used it. I was hooked!

Later I was playing in a club and Frank Beard (the drummer for ZZ Top) and his wife, Debbie, came to hear us. Soon I was painting drums for him as well. In 1990, I joined a Los Angeles band called Kik Tracee that had just signed with RCA Records. In the three years that I was with the band, I painted kits for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Mana, ZZ Top, and the Extreme. Sometimes I even carried the drums and painting supplies in the luggage bay of our tour bus and painted them in my hotel room after playing a show.

I left Kik Tracee in 1993 and came back to Houston to figure out what to do next. Frank Beard asked if I wanted to be his drum tech. By then, he knew me and my artwork well. I had painted seven drum kits (each kit containing at least 12 drums) and dozens of pairs of blue jeans, denim jackets, leather jackets, and racing car helmets for him. I spent 1994 on the road with ZZ Top's Antenna World Tour. I had a road case with my compressor and supplies packed along with the band gear, and painted jackets, T-shirts, and portraits backstage for the band and crew. I had to keep the creative juices flowing...... (the articles then went on to a "Preparartion for Painting Drums" tutorial.)