I did do an off-Broadway show for about 15 months. '91 and '92. It was nice to have a steady paycheck for a while. It was Oliver Jackson and Earl May, Art Barron and myself were the house band. I was 24 and 25 at the time.

[My mother] told me a little bit about the scene out there and I think, as a small child, I just always felt a connection to that history because my mother had described it to me.

Another classical music teacher from Performing Arts that I've stayed in contact with is Jonathan Strasser.

I saw that [music] reflected in my mother when we listened to these records [of Bob Gordon]. And I felt it too.

I never got discouraged for long, but we all got our butts kicked musically.

When I was a kid, I always saw these pictures of a man called Bob Gordon with a baritone saxophone, who I understood was my father. Turns out he wasn't. He was my mother's first husband.

Particularly, in my situation, I needed a way out of where I was. So music was that.