Jevou's music background |
I grew up in a house that played and listened to a lot of music. It seemed like soundtracks to musicals were always on the stereo. I can't tell you how many times we listened to Jesus Christ Superstar, Hair or Pippin. It was always fun when my mom, sister or uncle played piano with my brother on guitar. My uncle grew up and jammed with Herbie Hancock and Ramsey Lewis and one of our cousins is the legendary Corky Siegel. I also hung out and continue to be friends with local drumming sensation, Howie Kantoff. My "official" music training began when I was around 9 or 10 with piano lessons by Mrs. Dee. Her claim to fame was that she supposedly was Barry Manilow's first piano teacher. I believe she thought this would inspire her students but it wasn't a motivating factor for me. I only took lessons with her for about a year and never really followed through with piano after that. In 5th grade I took Cornet lessons at Romona, my public school for about a year. As I recall, I had one solo proformance where I played "Tomorrow" from the Annie soundtrack. From 7th grade at Wilmette Jr. High through I believe Sophomore or Junior year at New Trier High School I took voice lessons. During my Junior year at University of Wisconsin - Madison I bought an accoustic and electric guitar. My brother Jim gave me one lesson and left me with a chord book plus I bought a Grateful Dead lyrics book. Also in college I bought some bongos. Senior year I hosted a drumming circle in the basement of our home on Thursday nights. That's about it for my "official" music training. I also spent some time on the business side of music between the years 1992-1996. This started with an internship in the promotion department at WXRT radio which led to a brief gig booking bands at the Cubby Bear in Wrigleyville. I started a one man operation promoting bands (Nocturnal Sounds). I was also a record store clerk at Dog Ear and at Tower Records on Belden. My last endeavour in the "biz" was an internship with an audio engineer, Marty Feldman of Paragon who in the 70's recorded several bands including Chicago's very own, Styx. I learned two important things from this internship; first was how to single out and listen for individual audio tracks when hearing music. More importantly however, I learned that when taking out the trash, one should always consolidate the garbage in order to use less bags. There was one lesson however that I was unsuccesful at learning, which was that business comes before family. My internship with Marty ended abruptly when he "let me go" because of my lack of focus when my girlfriend (now wife) had cancer. |
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