Haunted Props, Halloween Masks, and an Introduction to Rock Vocals... From late 1998 through 2001, I continued to work out and stayed in shape although I wasn't quite as strong or as built as in my early twenties during the early 1990s. I was now 200 pounds though, and at six feet tall, i had reached my goal of being at least 6'0" and 200 lbs finally. I bought several more instruments over the following decade including another fender guitar... this time a black one with a white faceplate and a crate amp to go with it in 2002, and an all black warlock bass in 2003 like Nikki Sixx plays in the Live Wire video. My girlfriend owned a Casio keyboard which I started playing around with as well and added that to all the other equipment and gear I had set up in the home studio I was putting together. I had a bunch of cool black and gray guitar pics with scorpions on them that I bought at PnS because I liked the band Scorpions so much with metal anthems like "The Zoo", "Bad Boys Running Wild", and ballads like "Always Somewhere". I started humming melodies and riffs into my tape recorder like I did in the early 90s a decade earlier, and also writing lyrics again and ideas for songs. My old special effects (SPFX) hobby took on a new direction in 2001 as I started making Halloween masks and haunted props and sculpting some of the scariest zombies and vampires and monsters I could dream up. Demons, scarecrows, skeletons, and more. Severed arms, creepy monster hands, giant spiders, witches, and all kinds of other horrifying creations. Latex masks and plaster molds and clay sculptures sat on wooden benches I had built all around my basement workshop. Whenever I had friends over, I always had to show them my monsters in the basement. I've been told by several people over the years that I should've made a business of these Halloween masks and haunted props. I had a friend named Dan who I knew from highschool that now had his own disco cover band that played all over Pittsburgh and many bars and clubs in my hometown area. I followed them around alot and watched them play in many venues and Dan came over to my house several times and taught me some things on the guitar as far as figuring out how to play certain riffs and techniques. On my own, I was learning songs like "Still of the Night" by Whitesnake at the time and also composing music on the keyboard and my guitar. My instrument collection was growing and I was planning to start my own band and turn my basement garage... where I had my Special Effects workshop... into a band rehearsal studio as well. I started taking guitar lessons at Pianos n Stuff in Blawnox and learning bass on my own from different instructional books and magazines. Then I started placing ads in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette looking for other musicians to start an 80s rock cover band.

Rock Vocals and Miniature Model Scenery... Still lifting weights and now in my early 30s, my girlfriend Dawn and I got engaged in 2003. We both went to a martial arts school to learn Taekwondo together and I went up a few belt ranks again like my karate several years earlier. All of these martial arts classes I took over the years would have calisthenics and warm up exercises and stretching... sometimes they were lead by the instructor and sometimes i just had different stretches I would do on my own before class. I would later add some of these warm ups and stretches to my bodybuilding workouts at home. We also learned Aikido as part of the training but i only stayed in it for about a year and a half. Dawn kept going for another year or so. I was happily still in the "300 pound bench club" and weighed about 210 pounds and adding a little bit of muscle again. Taking a break from my Contracting, I took an office job in downtown Pittsburgh in 2002 working in the US Steel building / USX Tower and the following year attended McGrail School of Voice on the other side of town to learn how to sing. I would walk 7 or 8 city blocks after work across downtown Pittsburgh once a week to learn the "Authentic Bel Canto Technique" from an elderly voice instructor / vocal coach and owner of the school by the name of Carol Forsythe. Learning to sing from my diaphragm and with proper breathing and posture, I sang vowel exercises and scales as she played the piano. I also sang very old songs from the 1920s and 30s and also practiced from the Vaccai Practical Method of Italian Singing... a Bel Canto book for tenors and barritones. Bel Canto style is over 200 years old from the guilded age and means "beautiful singing" in the classical Italian style. I would find out many years later that this was the same style of singing Sebastian Bach of Skid Row learned when he started out in New York and New Jersey with the band Skid Row after being introduced to his vocal coach by John Bon Jovi. Vocalists that learn this method of singing are said to be "classically" trained. I would always sing my rock songs over the years since highschool just from the heart for fun with no training, but now I had been practicing singing several rock ballads at home in my apartment for many months leading up to enrolling in the Mcgrail music program. I continued singing my vocal warm ups and exercises at home once I started learning to sing properly at Mcgrail School of Voice, then began applying those techniques to the rock songs I grew up with, using breath support and singing from my diaphragm. My vocal coach said I had a beautiful voice and was improving month to month but although I enjoyed my lessons, I wanted to sing my kind of music ... 80s rock and metal! Several months went by as I practiced my newly acquired vocal skills. After I had asked her a couple of times, eventually Miss Forsythe let me bring in my own music one day and let me sing the songs I had been practicing at home. Those rock ballads happened to be "Every Rose Has its Thorn" by Poison, "Heaven" by Warrant, and Bon Jovi "Stick to Your Guns". My instructor wasn't the biggest fan of my taste in music and was quite critical of me, saying that I was all over the place and wasn't applying any of the techniques I had learned. This of course burst my bubble and I was disappointed for awhile, but kept singing my rock songs at home using the techniques she had taught me, while continuing to attend Mcgrail School of Voice after work each week. Eventually I stopped working in the city and went back to my contracting career painting homes and churches and businesses all around the Pittsburgh suburbs. In recent years I was interested in going back to Mcgrail but learned that Miss Forsythe had sadly passed away a few years after I was a student there and the school closed. Here's a photo of Dawn and I at a company Christmas dinner. Once I started painting again, we rented a small house out in the country and got married in 2004. I bought a Stagg drum set along with an omnidirectional vocal recording mic in 2005 to go along with the other instruments and to practice my vocals. Then I set all that up around the living room and that became my music studio. I started learning drums on my own with the Vinnie Appice Rock Drum Method instructional book and CD that I bought at the music store. I didnt put a band together as planned, but kept writing riffs and melodies for songs and I was starting to make miniature model scenery as part of my SPFX hobby and didnt have much room left. I made mountains, bridges, buildings, and roller coasters... scratchbuilt from plastic, cardboard, wood, metal, and anything I could use to build the model layouts. I also kept sculpting dragons and dinosaurs and carousel horses out of clay and making spooky masks and props. When I wasn't out painting houses or churches, I was usually at home making special effects scenery and sculpting something or practicing my drums, bass, and guitar. This went on through 2004, 2005, and the first half of 2006 until we left Pennsylvania for new adventures.

Starting Over in Florida... In 2006, Dawn and I relocated to Central Florida where I would live for the next 6 years about 45 minutes from Walt Disney World... halfway between Tampa and Orlando. We moved there because most of my painting customers were "snowbirds" and said I was such a good worker and painter that I would do well there and I also knew I could work outdoors all year instead of only doing interior work in the winter. But I soon found out it was very hard to become a contractor in Florida. It didnt matter that I had owned my own business for 2 decades already. They wanted me to take out a worker's comp policy which wasn't required in my home state unless I had employees. In Florida that would cost me several thousand dollars per year just for myself with no workers. My contractor's liability insurance which I always carried in Pa was now going to cost 3 times the amount in Florida, as well. To make matters worse, I would have to take courses and competency tests in the towns and counties I wanted to do business in to be licensed which would also be expensive. Pennsylvania never required anything like that back then to be a painter, or for many other construction trades like roofing or siding... they only had licensing for things like plumbing and electrical. Finally, you were required to have worked for another contractor for 3 years or so in that area and they would have to be a reference as well. This was obviously the biggest scam in my eyes and discouraged small businesses while directing all the work towards big companies that could afford all this. It was all corrupt. So, there were only a couple of well known contractors in each trade in every town in Central Florida. I gave up on being a contractor and instead worked as a painter for different apartment complexes and held other jobs during my time there. Very discouraged and angry, I was regretting the move although it was nice down there with the beautiful weather and beaches and resorts and amusement parks. I had brought all my musical instruments and vocal equipment down south with me including a guitar, warlock style bass, my wife's Casio keyboard, an omnidirectional vocal recording mic, and Stagg drum set. I was hoping to set up my home music studio in our new apartment to write and rehearse and also meet up with other musicians in the Orlando and Tampa areas to finally start an 80s Rock cover band. Unfortunately, I contracted pneumonia and both of my lungs were collapsed and I wound up in progressive care for a week in the hospital. Things didn't look good, and i decided to give up all my dreams and sell all my painting and contracting equipment along with all my instruments and never look back but I eventually got better. It took several months of exercise and rest to build my strength back up but I didn't think I would ever be able to climb all over houses and churches again as a contractor and lost the drive to do anything more with music at the time and just kind of gave up. I was in my mid 30s now and I started painting little Bob Ross landscapes and seascapes like the beach I painted above at the top of these web pages... and made more model scenery... trees and hills, buildings, factories, water towers, and other structures you might find on a model railroad layout while I was healing. By the way, Rod Stewart, who I listened to alot as a kid, also had this same hobby of model railroads and miniature scenery as he got older. I did get heavily back into lifting weights eventually, and managed to bulk up a couple of times during my time in Florida, building myself up to bench pressing well over 300 pounds in late 2007 like when I was younger... but not quite as strong as back then. I was heavier now though and filled out and bigger overall... weighing around 213-214 pounds. Later in 2008, I sustained another injury... this time tearing my right elbow tendon during barbell tricep extensions behind my head. This was excruciating and knocked me out of fitness and all my bodybuilding exercises for the next 6 months... just as I was bulking up again. Dawn and I separated soon after and i went back home to Pennsylvania for the next 8 months and started painting houses again. I took my Olympic weight bench with me but my car wouldn't have handled all my 450 pounds or more of cast iron weights so I sold them before embarking on my trip home. I lost alot of weight and muscle while my elbow tendon healed and from climbing up and down ladders and painting homes and cottages back in Pennsylvania, and from alot of stress and hard times I went through during the next couple of years. I returned to Florida to try and save my marriage but it ended in divorce and I found myself in the middle of the hardest time of my life up to that point.

Church and Bible Study... While living in Florida, I attended several churches during my time there and started listening to alot of Christian music like Jeremy Camp, Christy Nockels, Keith Green, Desperation Band, and Michael W Smith. New Life Worship had a beautiful version of "Amazed". When I arrived back in Florida, I found a place to stay about a half hour from the town I used to live in. It was the closest place I could find to our area of Zephyrhills where we had lived the last several years and in a remote rural town called Brookville. I started going to a Baptist church nearby and met some very nice people there who helped me as I struggled to deal with everything i was going through. I was staying on a farm at a country style bed and breakfast house there out in the country. They had orange groves and grapefruits all around. It was a big beautiful house with the owner living on the main floor and her guests would stay upstairs. There were animals in the fenced in front yard like chickens and goats and ducks and a dog. It was built on a slight hill, so as you walked around to the back, that's where I parked and where the basement was which was remodeled into an apartment... which is where I lived for awhile. I had a temporary job with the State of Florida in downtown Tampa at the Department of Children and Families but they had eliminated many of the positions only a few months later and mine was one of those positions. I wasn't able to afford the rent now at the bed and breakfast and was behind in my bills and about to lose my car. The divorce was almost final and my Christian marriage counselor, who I had kept in touch with and still visited during this time put me in contact with a pastor and his wife in Zephyrhills who had a church in a campground with several cabins on the property. They let me stay in one of the cabins so I talked with my pastor and some of the other members of the church in Brookville and I started attending church at the campground now, since I was living there. I made some friends again and the church had a praise and worship band that played current christian contemporary music including alot of Hillsong and their main singer Darlene Zschech from Australia. I was familiar with some of the songs and I wanted to join the band but they already had a singer and guitar player, and I hadn't practiced guitar or sang in several years and had forgotten alot of the chords and music theory and basics of playing guitar. Still, I would sit close to the front just to sing along and be as close to the band as possible. Hillsong would soon become my favorite Christian band. My car was repossessed and I lost everything and didnt know what to do. Even though I had returned to Florida and was very involved with my current church and had some good people in my life at that time, the bad times didn't seem like they would ever end... but then I finally met someone very special who helped me through all of it and I would fall in love once again. I met a group of new friends who were holding a Bible study in the park while walking my dog and a few of them came over to pet my dog and we introduced ourselves. Their names were Ethan, Rick, and Janna... and they all worked at the hospital where I was volunteering. I was going through a very hard time in my life after another divorce and Ethan was looking for a roommate so I joined the bible study group and moved in as his roommate and we hosted most of the bible study fellowships there at our apartment or they were sometimes held at Rick and his wife's apartment several doors over. 15 or so of us would gather for bible study every week and Ethan would play the piano while we would all sing praise and worship songs like the ones the band would play at my previous church. Some of the songs were "You Are My King (Amazing Love)" by Candi Pearson, and "Here I Am to Worship" by Darlene Zschech and Hillsong. These links are my favorite versions of the songs. Janna and I would start dating and she would become my best friend and we would visit many beautiful resorts, cruises, and parks like these photos from Clearwater Beach and Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom, and the lighthouse where we are pictured together above. Rick and Ethan also invited me along to sing praise and worship songs and Christmas songs for elderly patients at the hospital. We would meet up with other christian groups of girls and guys and have christian fellowship gatherings a couple of hours away in Sarasota and sit around and sing praise and worship songs, but we would also sing popular music as a group like 90s and current songs on the radio. It was around this time that I thought I might still do something with music. Being around Ethan playing piano and all the beautiful singing in our bible study group made me want to start learning piano and keyboards again and singing Christian music now. And of course, pick up guitar again, which I hadn't done in a few years. I hadn't worked out in a long time and was down to about 180 pounds from all the stress ... my thinnest since I was a couple years out of highschool. Janna bought me another Olympic weight set and weight rack and a smaller standard weight set in early 2010 as well to replace the ones I left behind 2 years before and I set them all up with my Olympic bench and finally had my home gym again. Over the next 6 months throughout the first half of 2010, I toned up first, and then started bulking up once again. My shoulders and arms were getting bigger and I gained about 45 pounds of muscle... weighing 225 and bench pressing my weight in sets (2 plates) and probably able to max around 290 pounds. I started seriously considering becoming a personal trainer and also took courses at Pasco Hernando Community College to get my CPR certification and also become AED certified (Automatic Electronic Defibrilator) which is required in Florida to be a personal trainer. I looked into it further and found there were several national organizations that offered online certifications and they had 6 or 8 week courses costing hundreds of dollars then I'd have to take a state test that cost hundreds more dollars to be licensed. With all my knowledge and experience lifting weights all my life, this didnt sit well with to me. Why can someone with no fitness experience be able to do that while I worked hard all these years to stay in shape? Now I have to pay all this money and take an online course or 8 weeks of classes ? Unfortunately, I stopped lifting weights later that year after a couple of stays in the hospital from my asthma. Soon I started sculpting again, and not just special effects and scary things, though. I was also sculpting flowers, pottery, scrolls and acanthus leaves, and other artistic things and making cement castings of some of them, including this Greek goddess I'm sculpting here above. I also started drawing again... dinosaurs and dragons and landscapes and other things. My drawing and painting and sculpting took the place of music and lifting for awhile. In 2012, after turning 40 years old, I left Florida to go back to my home state of Pennsylvania. Without any space in my car, I left my Olympic weight bench and all my weights behind this time... and Janna moved up a year and a half later.