I'd been trying to make a go of it with my band, Black Roses. The problem with bands is drummers — they come and go, and when yours disappears right before a string of shows, you have two choices: cancel or figure something out. I figured something out.

I spent a week recording backing tracks — drums, bass, rhythm guitars — everything a full band would play. Then I walked into the venue with a desktop computer, a 24-inch CRT monitor, my guitars, and an amp. The owner looked at me like I'd lost my mind. "I'm your band tonight," I told him.

It was terrifying. I had finished recording the tracks just hours before load-in. Nobody had seen anything like it. But it worked. The venue wanted me back. And the next week. And the week after that.

That question came from someone in the crowd one night after hearing me play "Signs" by the Five Man Electrical Band. I hadn't named it yet. They named it for me. It stuck. OMEB was born.

Everyone told me it wasn't going to work. "No one is going to hire a heavy metal guitarist with a computer. They'll laugh you off the stage." They were wrong.

OMEB became a household name in Cincinnati. I became the house band for the WEBN Dawn Patrol — playing everything from their Pregnant Bikini Contest to the main stage for the Labor Day Fireworks Celebration. I was hired as featured local support at Riverbend Music Center, performing inside the venue as guests arrived for shows headlined by KISS, Mötley Crüe, Styx, Poison, and many more.

I opened the OMEB School of Rock, teaching guitar to the next generation. At my peak I had 55 students and was playing 5–6 nights a week. I even recorded several songs with local country legend Bobby Mackey. It felt like everything was finally working.

Then the recession hit.

Within a year, I went from 55 students to 20. From playing 5–6 nights a week to 2–3. The bar scene in Ohio was dying — people stopped going out, and too many musicians were willing to play for beer money, which tanked the rates for everyone.

The WEBN Dawn Patrol was retired. The Riverbend gigs disappeared — national acts started putting clauses in their contracts banning pre-show entertainment. Every door that had opened started closing at the same time.

I looked at the numbers. I looked at the landscape. And I made the hardest call of my career: it was time to get a real job.

The problem was, nobody would hire me without a degree.

I'd been the fat kid who got bullied growing up. Music had always been the place where none of that mattered — where I could be exactly who I was and it was enough. Giving that up, even temporarily, felt like losing myself. But I wasn't giving up music. I was just getting strategic.

I went back to school as an adult. Nights and weekends. Still playing gigs whenever I could. I completed a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration in 18 months. Then kept going. Finished my MBA.

But having an advanced degree didn't open the doors I thought it would. I was stuck in entry-level jobs, still being laughed at — this time not for the one-man-band concept, but for my look. The long hair. The rock star appearance. Interviewers who couldn't see past it.

I'd spent years proving the concept worked on stage. Now I had to prove the person behind it was worth taking seriously in a boardroom.

So I did. In 2019, I successfully defended my Ph.D. in Marketing Management. The kid who failed out of college with a ruptured eardrum had a doctorate. But I still wasn't unstuck. Not yet.

The breakthrough didn't come from a stage or a boardroom. It came from a grocery store.

Ray Dietrich, owner of Rivertown IGA, asked if I knew anyone who could help with his store's social media. I took the gig myself. What followed was one of the strangest and most important chapters of my career.

The doors opened. I became VP of Marketing for a growing company, leading strategy and brand at an executive level. I started teaching as a Marketing Professor at the University of Cincinnati and Thomas More University — standing in front of classrooms helping the next generation of marketers find their footing.

Today I serve as a marketing and communications consultant for a state government agency, working at a scale I couldn't have imagined when I was hauling a desktop computer into a bar and calling myself a band.

The rock n' roll look that people said would hold me back? Turns out it's the most memorable thing about me in every room I walk into.

While the day job kept growing, the music never stopped — and the people I was making it with started getting legendary.

I started recording and performing with Vinny Appice — the legendary drummer for Black Sabbath and Dio — a creative partnership that continues to this day. Together we co-founded Sabbath Knights. I'm also still actively recording with Todd Sucherman, drummer for Styx, on productions that draw contributors from literally around the world. And with the Cincinnati Vampires — my rock supergroup — we crossed 1 million plays on Facebook with our cover of "Close My Eyes Forever."

Through all of it, I kept playing in-person too. Local venues. Private events. Anything that would have me. I was determined to keep the live thing alive even as the rooms got harder to fill.

By 2025, that determination was running out of fuel.

By June 2025, I was done with the live circuit. I cancelled all my gigs. I had come to terms with it — it was over. The bar scene was dead. The big Riverbend gigs were a thing of the past. I was playing to half-empty rooms, night after night, wondering why I kept showing up for spaces that had stopped showing up for me.

Then my friend Alexa Rae said four words that changed everything: "You should play on TikTok."

My response was exactly what you'd expect from someone who'd been fighting this battle for twenty years: "Nobody's going to watch my old fat ass on TikTok."

She said: "You'd be surprised. You should do it."

The frustration I'd been carrying for years wasn't about talent or effort. It was about venue. The same songs that left a bar half-empty could fill a global broadcast with thousands of people who had been looking for exactly that sound. Same talent. Same songs. Different room.

In August 2025, I went live on TikTok for the first time. What happened next is what the rest of this story is about.

I made my first TikTok Live in August 2025. Within months I went from 2,000 followers to over 15,000. Rock n' Roll Church was born — every Sunday, 9AM EST, live rock to anyone in the world who wants to hear it. Plus mid-week sessions every Tuesday and Thursday at 3PM EST.

Some Sundays it's 3,000 people. Some Sundays it's 10,000. They come from everywhere. They stay. They come back. And when a troll shows up — which they do, because some things never change — my community defends the room before I even see the comment. That's when I knew I'd finally found the right room.

Today, 84K+ followers across TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. Members of the Rock n' Roll Church Congregation tune in from every continent. New music releases every month. The grind that almost broke me became the platform that finally fits.