11 years old, and I first became interested in drumming from seeing a highschool indoor drumline performance.

I play a silver sparkle Premier Cabria Fusion set with a 13' Tama Metalworks Snare.
I have a custom cymbal set up consisting of Sabian, Zildjian, and Paiste cymbals.
I use a DDrum DRT bass drum triggering system that's being powered by a Roland TD-20 drum module, and I exclusively use Vic Virth 2BN Nylon tipped sticks.

I would have to say my biggest influence is Swedish tech metal band Meshuggah.
They were always ahead of the game and doing things that bands have never thought of before and they opened my mind to poly-rhythms and odd time signatures.
Listening to them made me realize that there's more to rhythms than just your regular 4/4 groove, and at the same time, possible to create technical rhythms while still retaining that underlying 4/4 groove that makes everything come together.

My first band was a cover band called Sonic Brew. It consisted of my best childhood friend Brandon Melton on bass, his dad Steve Daugherty on guitar, and Brian Tyndall on vocals. We started in 2002 and me and Brandon were only 14 years old. While our highschool classmates were doing to dances and football games, we were rocking out bars and clubs and making money. It was a great introduction into the live music scene and it gave me and my friend a lot of live experience.

Ive played in various bands since then ranging from country to tech. metal.
I'm currently playing with my progressive metal band Controlling Evolution that
me and my two best friends Alex Hayden, and Caleb Dykes started together in
2010. Its been a long process and we just recruited Scott Shepard on bass and
have just recorded our new e.p. titled "Gods and Astounding Arts" and are currently playing and booking shows and have a lot of great things planned and are aiming for touring as soon as possible.

Even though I would love to jam with Frederick Thordendale from Meshuggah and Mishaa Mansoor from Periphery, I would have to say Frank Zappa. He was an extraordinary musician and was a very eccentric person and drew from a well versed background of music. Plus he was a very funny guy and out there just like I am so i know we would connect and have a great experience playing together.

The biggest audience so far was at the SCHMA in Birmingham, AL and I was performing with my old band NOIR and i believe there was close to 500 people there. I just remember sitting down behind my kit and looking up and seeing bodies top to bottom and left to right and then getting extremely nervous. I could barely put my water bottle up to my face to drink because my hands were shaking so badly. lol

I believe the smallest show was at tremors with my cover band back on '02. i think there was two people there. lol Yeah that was a wonderful show. We rocked those two people out hard though!

The most memorable show so far was definitely at the old schma in birmingham, AL with my old band NOIR. Our singer had been telling us he had something big for the show for a few weeks prior but wouldnt tell any of us what it was. He brought something big to this show with us but kept it wrapped in a tarp and wouldnt let us see and being the cool guys we were, decided to let it be a surprise. So fast forward to the last heavy breakdown of our set, our singer wheeled out the big suprise, and un-tarpped an old and huge wooden TV and grabbed a sledgehammer that he had hidden somehow and raised it into the air as he let out a scream from hell and then began smashing the TV into bits in tempo with the song and everyone started going crazy and getting violent in the pit. No one was told at the venue that it was going to happen so of course we were almost kicked out, a band which will stay nameless got very upset and promised to blacklist us but we all got a great laugh out of it and it was all on good fun. But that will always stand out as one of my most memorable shows

It would have to be the smashing pumpkins album Siamese Dream. Its one of my favorite albums of all time and always will be. Its one of the few albums that i can literally listen to over and over and never grow tired of it and I believe it help keep my sanity.