My First Guitar... In '89 I graduated highschool then bought my first guitar as a present for myself at Christmas time. It was an all black used kramer with a black strap that had a silver lightning bolt on it... and is pictured below. Kind of blurry, but the only pic I have of it. My girlfriend and I went to look at it and took my friend Jason with us to test it out since he was a musician and played guitar. The kid selling it and his girlfriend invited us in to look at it and I asked Jason to tell me what he thought. After a quick look over and playing the instrument a little, he said it was a good deal. I asked the kid selling it if he could play something I might know and he played the intro to "Little Fighter" by White Lion. He had the right settings on his pedals and amp controls to make it sound just like the record, so I was impressed and with my friend's approval, I bought my first guitar. I was 18 and started buying guitar books and magazines and trying to learn to play the thing as fast as I could, learning lots of chords and scales and trying to figure out by ear some of the riffs and intros to my favorite songs. One of those intros was "Lovesong" by Tesla. I would also try to figure out the notes to songs like Fleetwood Mac's "The Chain", and sometimes come up with little melodies and intros of my own.

A year later in 1990, my girlfriend bought me my 2nd guitar for Christmas that I had been salivating over for several months at Doug's Music ... a music store right up the street from my old neighborhood where I grew up. This beautiful instrument was a Westone which was candy apple red with a black crackle design. I got a tan and black tiger striped strap to go with it, and a black gig bag to carry it in. Now 19 yrs old, I was playing both of them and making hundreds of little flash cards to teach myself chords, notes on the frets of the guitar, scales, intervals, and more. I made several stacks of flashcards like this and spent lots of time on the couch with one of my guitars on my lap, listening to my Walkman headset and studying music theory and how scales and chords and melodies are built around different keys as I practiced playing my rock songs I was learning. Here i am opening that red Westone guitar on Christmas day and then strumming a few chords as my Dad and brother look on. Yes, this is the same photo you see in my banner at the top of my website above... I just blurred the background out and added the titles for my site. Over the following couple of years, I ordered books on playing rock guitar, and I bought music books with 80s pop songs and top 40 hits. I started getting magazines like Guitar School. The magazines always had sheet music and guitar tablature for songs by bands like Warrant, Skid Row, and Tesla. I had lessons here and there over the years at the music store and also from friends who played guitar. My friend Jason, who went with me to buy my black Kramer, was a guitar and banjo player... kind of a prodigy at a very young age... and gave me a little pignose practice amp and a paper grocery bag full of cables and effects pedals for distortion, flange, chorus, reverb, etc. Jason would help me learn a little from time to time at my house around then and show me different chords and scales used in some of the songs I was learning to play. Sometimes I would come up with ideas for riffs and melodies and couldn't read or write music well enough yet to write them down and actually compose music. So instead, I would hum them into my tape recorder and then write lyrics for the verses to go along with the riffs and melodies I recorded.

Bodybuilding, Powerbuilding, and the 300 pound Bench Club... 1990 was when I finally came out of that plateau and changed the way I lifted weights and began to put a little more muscle on, gaining weight and getting alot stronger. I was now 5 ft 11 and 1/2" tall and still hoping to be at least 6 foot someday and over 200 pounds. I started buying bodybuilding magazines like FLEX magazine and watching bodybuilding workout programs on TV. I wasnt interested at all in competing on stage like that, but I wanted to learn how to get bigger and stronger and pack on more muscle. So, I changed my workout to a 2 day split, doing half my body every other day and the other muscle groups on the alternate days in between. I was now doing my Day One exervices like chest, shoulders, and arms on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Sunday... and doing Day 2 exercises like back, legs, and abs on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. I still rarely took a day off, so the following week I would continue lifting my Day One exercises every other day so they would now fall on Tuesday, Thursday, and so on. I was actually getting enough rest finally as each muscle had the days between to heal and grow. On top of that, I started doing 4 or 5 exercises for my chest, 3 or 4 exercises for my triceps and biceps, 4 exercises for my shoulders, etc. I also started doing more back and leg exercises that I hardly trained in my earlier years. My workouts took 2 and a half to 3 hours sometimes now that I was lifting like a bodybuilder. This didnt last forever as I was usually completely exhausted from the monster workouts so I eventually went back to 1 or 2 exercise per body part, though I kept my new 2 day split routine so my muscle groups could rest and grow. Now I was lifting more like a powerbuilder... kind of a cross between a powerlifter and bodybuilder... though I would sometimes go back to the bodybuilding routine from time to time. I was always very against steroids and was completely natural. I had friends that took lots of pills and vitamins, or drank things like Dynamic Muscle Builder formulas, but I considered that cheating. For a few months when I was 18 and 19, I tried something called Challenge Rapid Weight Gain that i read about in the magazines and bought at GNC which was a vanilla flavored powder that I mixed with milk. It wasn't really a protein shake, but had lots of calories to help you gain weight. I only tried it for a few months, but stopped using it and just focused on my new powerbuilding workout and put about 10 pounds of muscle on over the following year and a half throughout 1990 and 1991. During this time I ran the track with my friends sometimes in the evenings like I had in 1986. We would normally run a lap then walk a lap. Usually 3/4 of a mile running and the same distance walking so about 6 laps each night total. That would only be a couple of times a week and we did this from time to time throughout the 1990s. Many of the rock and metal bands were coming out with new albums in 1990 and '91 like Skid Row, Warrant, Scorpions, Ratt, Poison... so I had lots of new music to lift weights to. I went from my late 80s bodyweight of 175 to adding 10 pounds of muscle on and weighing around 185 and stayed there throughout most of the 90s. I always had a good appetite, but I was trying to eat more protein now, though I wasn't counting calories or adding up my grams of macros like carbs and fat and protein yet. I was just earing bigger portions. My favorite bulking up meal was pizza and chicken. I would order a 16 cut thick from J&S Pizza up at the mall and cook a big tray of BBQ chicken thighs, or shake n bake chicken. Then I'd put it all in freezer bags and I'd have a couple of slices of pizza with a couple pieces of chicken for lunch and supper, and I'd do this for several days at a time between other dinners I would cook like lasagna or stuffed peppers. Both of those meals had plenty of protein too. For breakfast I now was eating 3 eggs every morning served different ways... scrambled, over medium, in French toast, and egg sandwiches. Two pieces of toast, orange juice, and milk were still staples of my breakfasts. I always loved milk, but started drinking a little more around this time. I was probably eating around 130 to 140 grams of protein per day around then with the larger meal portions, so it was an increase from my highschool years of around 100 to 120. Still, that was nothing close to how much protein bodybuilders normally eat. Summer '90 I started getting pretty strong for my size again. My arms and legs and shoulders were getting a little bigger and stronger than my highschool days and I was bulking up for the first time since 1987. My arms were now 16-3/4" and I was curling 110 on the straight bar, overhead triceping 115, and shoulder pressing 150 in sets. But my favorite exercise, bench press, is where I really improved. Fortunately, I now had my Dad's wooden bench he built me which could handle the heavier weights. I was always good on bench for my size, but I was now repping 230-235 (3 sets of 8) and maxing 300 pounds for the first time when I turned 19 in June. Later that summer, I was repping 240-245 and finally maxing 3 plates (3 big 45s on each side) which is 315. My friend Jerry would later refer to this as being in the 300 pound bench club. Throughout 1991 I started listening to older albums from Ozzy Osbourne and started getting familiar with DIO like "Rainbow in the Dark". I already had the Ultimate Sin album since 10th grade and was a big fan of Ozzy's guitarist Jake E Lee, but now I was hearing Bark at the Moon, and earlier albums with Randy Rhodes including songs like "Diary of a Madman" I would later become a big fan of Randy Rhodes and his neoclassical guitar style. By 1992 I was finally 6 ft tall and I stayed around this size and strength for several years during the early 90s and started going up again in late 92. In the spring of '93, and still weighing 185 pounds, my arms and shoulders had gotten even stronger and I was barbell curling 120 and barbell tricep extensioning 125-130. I was working out with 265 on bench press (3x8) and occasionally doing 270 - 6,6,6 just to see how many times I could lift my old 11th grade max i was so proud of when I was 16. My arms were around 17 to 17-1/4", and I was now maxing 350 pounds, which I did on 3 separate occasions. I would never be that strong again. I was 21 years old at the time.

College Years and Through the 90s... During my college years in '91 and '92, my friend Steve from Penn State, who I carpooled to my electrical engineering classes with and also attended my senior year of highschool with in Kittanning, gave me informal lessons at his house sometines and we also talked music as we carpooled to college while we listened to our rock songs on the way. He was surprised at how much I knew about music theory and said I had a good ear and would eventually be able to ear train and figure out how to play songs pretty well. The 45 minute drive to Penn State campus was like a music lesson too, as I would ask all kinds of questions about what chords to use with certain scales and what certain guitarists were doing in the rock songs we listened to on the way to class. Engineering was hard for me, though I was fascinated with electronics and computers. I wanted to repair CD players and radios and car stereos and work on computers and arcade games. I was working towards a degree in Electronic Engineering Technology, but it wasn't what I thought it would be. My musician friend Jason who played banjo and guitar urged me the previous year to go for music instead, but I really liked electronics. I wish I had listened to him. While attending Penn State, I bought some guitar transcription books from Pittsburgh's best and most popular music store, Pianos n Stuff, of my favorite metal bands like Motley Crue and Ratt. These were the entire albums for Invasion of Your Privacy and Shout at the Devil. After 2 semesters at Penn State New Kensington and overwhelmed with all my engineering and math courses, I took time away from college at the end of May that year to take a break for awhile and focused on my guitar.

Country Music and Painting Churches... In September of 1992, My highschool sweetheart Chris and I broke up, then I met a country girl from Freeport named Shannon a couple of months later who would always come in to the gas station I worked at. My friend Steve from college also stopped in and was surprised to see me and all bulked up as he put it and we started to hang out for awhile again. He must have forgotten that I lifted weights because I was working out the whole time we carpooled together during the previous year at Penn State. I got to meet Steve's sister Julie who i remembered from highschool, and who played keyboard. One time I was at his house and she and I were sitting on the edge of the bed in her room and she played 2 of the rock ballads I knew on her keyboard... "Carrie" by Europe and "Honestly" by Stryper. This completely blew me away and needless to say, after that I had a new instrument I wanted to learn and a new crush on Steve's sister. However, my new country girl friend kept stopping by the gas station at night to visit me and we started dating. By late 1992, I had a huge new black boom box with dual cassettes and a 3 disk compact disk changer, which was a popular feature at the time. I was starting to buy a few CDs of my rock bands to replace the cassettes I had. Guns N Roses were out around that time with the song "November Rain". Although I was learning guitar, it was the keyboards and piano that really caught my attention on this song. I probably could have taught music lessons at the time with all my music theory knowledge and all the songs I was learning to play, but I really wasn't proficient enough with guitar yet, and was preoccupied with going back to college. So, I hadn't thought of teaching guitar lessons at this point. Still, I loved learning and trying to ear train and figure out the melodies and intros and riffs to my favorite songs and had to show my friends sometimes. During the first half of 1993, I would drive up to IUP to visit Shannon at college where her and her friend Becky rented a trailer. Her and Becky would stay up there in Indiana Pa most of the week for classes then come back home on the weekends Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I would always take one of my guitars with me to visit and would practice at the trailer while she was in class. I was learning to play riffs and intros to several songs on my guitar like "House of Broken Love" and "She Only" by Great White. Shannon rubbed off on me as she would play alot of country music so I started getting into Travis Tritt, Brooks and Dunn, Trisha Yearwood, Randy Travis, Tim McGraw, Sawyer Brown, and several others. I became a country music fan for several years throughout much of the 90s, though I still listened to my 80s pop and rock that I grew up with. One of my favorite country songs at the time was "Anymore" by Travis Tritt. Even though I was a guy and listened to harder rock and metal growing up, I liked the sappy love songs and ballads too, and was really getting into the softer acoustic guitar parts of different kinds of music, so it was no surprise that the slow country songs by female artists like Faith Hill's "Breathe" would grow on me too. I was 21 years old and had started listening to a couple of country songs in the months before we met, and had asked my ex girlfriend if she wanted to find a church with me and start going to church together but we broke up before that happened. However, Shannon came from a Christian church-going family and rubbed off on me there too, as I asked if I could come along with her. They attended a small non-denominational church near Freeport in Cadogan Pa. I was in trouble and getting into fights and going through alot and we would go to church together and also pray about it when I would visit her at college or when we were out spending time together. Growing up as a kid, my Dad's side of the family was Protestant and my mom's side was Catholic and we only went to church at Christmas and Easter, so I never learned much about the Bible. Back in highschool I was made to go to the catholic church when I lived with my aunt and later that year with my cousins. I was Christian and a believer, though I wasn't ready to learn about God and felt forced to go. But now I was older and wanted to, and went every week together with her and her family. I had questions and doubts but I knew he was real and that he sent his son to be my savior and that Jesus died for me on the cross. For anyone who isn't Christian, and even newer believers, this can be alot to swallow, I know. I couldn't explain it and didnt quite understand it, but I knew it was all true... I always did. As the months went by and I learned more about God, I also listened more and more to country music. One song would go on to become what I think is probably my favorite country song... "Once Upon a Lifetime" by Alabama. Country music was a breath of fresh air for me and most of it was slow and very calming and just what I needed in my life at that time. I continued to learn chords and riffs and music theory and still listened to my classic rock songs, and some of my more melodic hard rock bands and ballads. Shannon was also into some of the same bands like Firehouse and Tesla, and classic rock by Bob Seger, the Eagles, and Journey. She also listened to the light or soft rock stations at night when she went to sleep... the kinds of songs from the late 70s and early 80s that I loved... the yacht rock I would get into again when I got older. Several months later in Aprl of 1993 right around Easter, I went up to the alter and knelt down in tears one day during an alter call at the end of service. Everyone was still singing our last songs as the pastor asked if anyone wanted any prayers or if anything is laying heavy on their hearts to just come up and there would be elders here to pray with you. Well, I lost it and tears streamed down my face as I stood next to Shannon in our church pew / bench singing and had this incredible tugging at my heart to go up. Shannon held my hand and looked at me, her eyes welling up as she saw how moved I was fighting back my tears, and took my hand and said softly "Come on, let's go up." We walked up to the alter which is just a couple of steps at the foot of the stage and knelt down, both of us in tears, as a few of the older church members laid their hands gently on us and her and I prayed silently. The rest of our small congregation kept singing back where they were seated. I didnt feel uncomfortable or watched, but i was very emotional and that day right there I asked the Lord to come into my life and stay with me all of my days. I asked him to protect me and to change my life for the better. To help me through my troubles, and to give me peace. If there was ever a doubt in my mind or confusion as to what I believed as a kid or teenager, I laid it all there before him at the cross and he came through for me. I may have already known the truth in my heart since I was a child, but I would say that was the day I actually got saved and gave my life over to him. I began a career painting churches and large Victorian homes in the summer of '93, and Shannon and I got married the following year in '94. I went from working for several painting companies my first year in 1993 to starting my own painting business the following summer in 1994 just as I was getting married. Over the next few years I added different types of home remodeling like drywall installation, suspended ceilings, carpeting and flooring, and landscaping to my business and commercial painting of stores and businesses in addition to the churches and homes I was already painting. My company became known as Ron Schaub Contracting. This went on throughout the 90s as I put off college for the next 5 or 6 years and focused on my painting and contracting business. I unfortunately sold those first 2 guitars to buy my painting tools and dropcloths and supplies to start my career as a contractor, though I kept studying music from time to time.

Though I was now focused on a new career painting churches and homes, I continued to practice guitar once in awhile, and took more lessons from time to time. 1995 rolled around and I built a wooden squat rack out of 2x4 lumber, bolted it all together, and set it up in the living room. This along with the wooden weight bench my dad built me in '88 were all I used as i didnt care for local gyms and fitness centers much. In 1996, I bought a creme colored fender squire guitar and a gorilla amp from Pianos 'n Stuff in Blawnox, my favorite music store. Later that year, I bought the Troy Stetina metal rhythm guitar course which came as a book and audio CD, and is part of a series of instructional books and CDs by the guitarist. This was the most comprehensive and informative learning tool I would come across in all my years of playing music up to that point, and I still use it to this day. The book and CD go in depth with lots of examples and exercises in the styles of many of the 80s hard rock and metal bands I grew up listening to. I took karate for a year in '95 and '96 going up a few belt and stripe ranks, learning self defense and some kickboxing. 1996 was also the year I finally bought an Olympic size weight bench with the wide uprights and adjustable squat rack. It had a heavier duty leglift than my old standard style weight benches from junior high and highschool. I also bought lots of Olympic size plates including several big 45s and a weight rack for them and a 7 foot long 45 pound Olympic bar. As a contractor painting churches, businesses, and large homes, I had trouble finding time to lift weights and play guitar / sing, or do much else for many years. I tried to stay in shape the best i could but had alot of periods where I would bulk up a little then take time off again because of my contracting schedule and lose the muscle I worked so hard to build. This would be a recurring theme throughout my life as health problems, injuries, and the exhausting work of climbing all over people's homes, going up and down ladders, and building scaffolds to paint huge church sanctuaries took its toll on me. Here is a picture of me, my brother, his girlfriend, and Shannon from 1996 or '97 at Sandcastle waterpark in those days. Finishing out the rest of the 90s, I went back to college in 1998 and 1999 for 3 semesters... this time at CCAC Boyce Campus in Monroeville for computer science. I still took some engineering classes just as I took computer classes many years before during my electrical engineering semesters at Penn State. The idea was to add up all my credits and combine them into one computer engineering degree but I wound up going through a divorce and with so much going on in my life then, I had to once again pull out of college and continued my career as a contractor painting churches and homes. In early '99 I was lifting in my 2nd bedroom which I had converted into a weight room and just happened to pick up a 90 pound barbell off the floor to place it over near the other wall of the room. It wasnt very heavy and I was used to curling more than that amount in sets. But when I twisted, I felt a terrible sharp pain and crunch in my middle upper back and upper left back. I barely drove myself to the emergency room all buckled over in pain, hardly able to walk to the car and again into the hospital. 2 young girls lifted me on the xray table and the doctor said I herniated several disks and also may have torn 3 small muscles that attach from my spine to my shoulder blade. This would be the first of many back injuries I would suffer as I got older. During this time, I had a Sony Optimus Walkman style CD player that I could jog the track with, lift weights to, or take to the wave pool and lay out in the summer. It was nice to be able to play my CDs through my headset instead of fast-forwarding and rewinding my cassettes all the time like before, but Walkman CD players always skipped... especially if you were running the track or working out. You also couldn't record anything on them, like you could with the cassette ones.