My maternal grandfather (who hailed from Liverpool!) was a professional drummer in Montreal in the early 1900’s (his band was called ‘Harry Marshak and his Minstrels of Melody)…I blame his genes. (My other grandfather played violin as well, as it happens). I scraped some money together at age 16 and bought a nylon-string guitar and the Neil Young ‘Harvest’ song book…Harvest had just been released. The chords were simple and the songs were great…a perfect way to teach myself to play. The songs just started spilling out. The music in my head continued and I wrote one thing after another, jammed with friends and started doing the open mics at places like Egerton’s and Fiddler’s Green (I went on after Dan Hill’s open mic turn one night at FG’s). I rented some studio time at the RCA studios in Montreal to record a demo. By age 18 I had enough material to nail a paying gig in a bar in downtown Toronto.

Then I dropped out of high school. At age 19 I moved as far as I could from my previous life (i.e. Vancouver) and, living as a hermit, studied classical guitar (under the great Robert Jordan) and classical piano playing for 7-8 hours per day. I scored a short film for a UBC student that won the film competition run by the NFB that year. During this period I began to get my life together and met my wife to be. Music was a dream. Having a family and stability was a priority. I became a doctor and then specialized in doing...vasectomies! I began to get back into it (music) slowly about 10 years ago. I got my feet wet studying jazz piano with the legendary Dave Hildinger and then moved back to acoustic guitar

At first, all I could write were little instrumental pieces. Then the words started flowing. Each year I challenged myself to overcome some hurdle (playing in front of an audience, forming a band, getting paying gigs, recording a CD…). Year by year I achieved these goals and set higher targets (I’ve played Black Sheep Inn, Irene’s and a number of other well-known spots locally…in 2006 I traveled to Havana to record several of my instrumentals with a group of Cuban session players). I received honourable mentions for 2 songs in Mike Pinder’s Song Wars and Band Wars respectively.

2011 saw the breakup of my band, docweissband, after 3 1/2 years of working together. I released a 5-song solo EP with Ken Friesen producing and engineering and great session players backing me up (Gary Craig, Andrew Affleck, Steve O’Connor, Terry Tufts, Steve Marriner and Brian Asselin).