The Short Version:
Born October 21st 1960
Home Town: Orangevale, Northern California
Harps I've Owned: Most all Hohners, Lee Oskars
Instruments I Play: Piano, Guitar, Harmonica
Occupation: IT Professional
Maritial Status: Happily Married
The Long Version:
Orangevale, Northern California - mid 1960's...
When I was very young I started out playing an old Magnus Organ my parents got somewhere - that's where all the madness started. By the time I was in the 6th grade my mother had me taking piano lessons in our small town. While my piano teacher wanted me to learn classical music I was leaning towards Boogie music as I preferred music I could tap my foot to. My parents just loved hearing me play - they didn't care what was coming out of that old upright piano. Soon after that I found the blues and loved playing it on our old piano.
1970's
My first taste for blues came from a very unexpected source- Led Zeppelin. I would search the LP bins of our local underground music store for bootleg live recordings of Led Zep, and on those old records are recordings of Robert Plant playing a harmonica during their blues sets. Granted he wasn't a "traditional" blues player but it was his playing that inspired me to reach for the harmonica. Robert Plant and Jimmy Page would "call and answer" on those old recordings - and I loved it! It was this music that lead me to Willie Dixon and other traditional American blues players.
I can still remember buying my first Hohner Marine Band harmonica for $8.00 at our local music store. From there I blistered my lips learning how to play. By the time I was in high school I could play well enough to impress my friends and family. My worship for the harp then fell to Magic Dick of the J.Geils Band. I tried my best to copy his licks, but I just couldn't reach those high blow bends. To this day I still struggle with them.
1980's
During this period I was busy going to college during the day and working at 7-11 during the night. Harmonica was my favorite instrument as it fit in my pocket much easier than a piano did, and I could impress my friends with it. Many a night I would sit at the counter of 7-11 playing my harp (when I should have been studying or working!) - playing my blues licks ... watching it rain outside the windows ...
By the early 80's I had received my AA degree in Computer Sciences and was working in the San Francisco Bay Area (Walnut Creek) in Crocker Bank's "Bank Card Center". My gir friend at the time bought me an acoustic Yamaha guitar for my birthday, which was my very first guitar. I tried learning how to play the harp and guitar at the same time, but found I could not get a good blues feel on my harp while strumming a guitar. Five years later I located a new job back home in Sacramento at the local Aerospace plant as a computer operator - working the swing shift . It was about this time I met a real "lightening boy" guitar player by the name of Gary Seward. Gary and I quickly became close friends and shared a house where we played music all the time. It was also during this time that I picked up the electric guitar and fell in love with it. My only problem was I found the guitar as a painful blistery instrument. Gary knew my love of the blues and introduced me to the open tunings that many of the old blues guitar players used to tune to. Once I open tuned my Fender Stratocaster to an open "E" I never looked back. This new tuning made much more sense and was very easy to play. I learned to play both rhythm and lead licks in the open tuning as I listened closely to musicians such as Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughn. My other guitar playing friends just didn't understand how I could play a guitar like this - but it made perfect sense to me. All the while I kept a harmonica in my pocket ... playing it when my fingers tired of the guitar.
1990's
It was during this time that I married my first wife Dee, with her 5 year old son Michael, and struggled keeping my new family afloat. I changed jobs and began working in the Health Care industry in the IT Department - and it was here that I met one of my very best friends - Steve Greene. He played bass - I played a little electric guitar, harmonica and keyboards - and he had a friend that played drums. This of course lead to my first real band experience. We called ourselves ROCKSLIDE learning popular classic rock tunes. Before long we had gigs and I was leading the band on vocals and guitar. There is absolutely no way to express the fun I had playing in that band ... but I still longed to play just blues ...
Somewhere in the mid 90's I began working at Hewlett-Packard where I met many friends and continued on with my professional IT career. It was during this period I was introduced to a band called Crying Blue Rain by a mutual friend. The first time I went to see this band was to a completely empty house. Nobody was there to see this blues power trio - but when they hit the stage my jaw dropped. On lead guitar was a monster of a man - huge and tall - playing a guitar that sounded ten times bigger!! His hands were the size of baseball mitts and they were flying at blinding speeds. But it wasn't just his playing skills - it was the tone of his guitar, his chord phrasing, his raw vocals - and they were playing blues!! The rhythm section was rock solid with the bass and drums - and my God they were tight! Definite ace players. After the show I introduced myself to the band and hinted that I played a little harmonica. To my absolute disbelief they invited me to join them on a song during an upcoming live gig - a gig where they were opening for Robin Trower. My first stage experience with Crying Blue Rain was a few weeks later to a packed house waiting to see Trower. When CBR waved me to join them on stage I just looked out over the smokey haze of what appeared to be a million people at the local music hall. It was that first performance that the lead guitar player, Jim "Corky" Newman, and I knew we had some sort of voodoo musical chemistry going. He broke into a bluesy number and queued me to play. It went over very well. After that night a local news paper wrote an article about us stating how good Crying Blue Rain was. The band asked me to join up with them - and I did. To the disappointment of my friends in Rockslide I informed them I was going to start playing with CBR - but we all agreed to remain friends and still play when we could. Joining up with CBR lead to many many memorable gigs to very large audiences throughout Northern California and Nevada. Corky on Guitar, Billy McCloskey on Bass, Johnny Weaver on drums and me on the harp. Corky and I used to do a lot of "call and answer" just like the old Led Zep albums I used to listen to. I learned to play harmonica in a fast bluesy flashy sort of way, and in one point of our show Corky and I would "battle" on stage, trading licks, building faster and faster - eventually leading into the cover song "Going Down". It was a real crowd pleaser each and every time we did it.
2000's
It was during this period my first wife and I divorced. I gave up my house and all of it's contents to get my personal life back on track - the only thing I didn't give up on was our son Michael. He and I had our moments of stress and disagreement, but we worked out our issues and remain in regular contact even to this day. Musically I had left Rockslide as the drummer and I no longer saw eye to eye. I also stopped playing as much in CBR as I needed time to get my life back on track and focus on my work at HP. My musician friends meant a lot to me, but I needed space to figure out how I was going to get myself back on track. As I finalized my divorce I met my soul mate at HP - my beautiful and wonderful wife Marcie. She saved me in so many ways and we are still happily married today. Having been smitten by the performance bug I found it hard to just quit playing music all together, so I remaind connected to Cryinb Blue Rain. As CBR went through different drummers, different sounds I found myself missing a little bit of the Rockslide days. My old pal Steve Greene was missing it also, so we decided to find a new drummer and give it another whirl. To our delight we found our old friend Dan Davies was interested in filling that position. Dan was an ace drummer and we were happy to have him. We even decided to change our name from Rockslide to Reflex. Later we added another guitar player - Chris Sullivan. This now gave me the ability to put down my guitar and play harmonica with Reflex. Reflex had many great shows and as I look back on that band I have many fond memories.
During the early 2000's HP went through a huge structural change and by the mid 2000's I realized I needed to move on once again with my career. I must have a Guardian Angel watching over me as I was offered a wonderful job with a biotech firm called Amgen. The only snag was that I would have to relocate to Northern Colorado. After living in the Sacramento area all my life this was going to be a big change for me and my family - but I felt we were ready for it. By 2007 my family had packed our bags, sold our California home and moved to Colorado.
Today I still work for Amgen and I still play my instruments. I join local blues jams and such as I still very much enjoy playing music with skilled musicians. I am now a grand father and very much enjoy the company of my family - but I still get the itch to play music. I guess that part of me will never change. During the long cold Colorado winters I'm unable to go fishing or hiking - so I spend those days in my shop - rebuilding my harmonicas and learning new techniques to make them even better. With the grace from the Lord above I'll hopefully keep doing this during the years ahead.
That's my story in a nutshell ... Mark "The KnuckleHead" Munoz
