“The drums are in me, just waiting to come out.”

My dad tells the story. I said to him, in begging for this drum set, I said, "The way that the guitar was in my older brother Josh, the way that it was in him waiting to come out, the drums are in me just waiting to come out." And he was like, "How can I say no to that?" You know. So I get this drum set. I'm 12 years old, and from that day forth, it was like I'd come home from school. I could not wait to get home from school to go into our garage and just start beating the hell out of those drums. I didn't have a release like that before. You know, it was very cathartic when you're entering adolescence. There's a lot of angst that you haven't even begun to understand, let alone process. Baseball was definitely my outlet up until that point, but this was creative and expressive and physical. I was emulating my heroes, the people I'd watched on MTV, but it was also just me alone with the drums just doing whatever I wanted to do. So that was freedom to me. That was just expression and the ability to get out whatever I was feeling inside.