HIMEBAUGH

I picked up my first guitar when I was 20 years old. It was in my garage and belonged to my Step Dad. It was an old Guild guitar with 2 strings on it. I took it to the guitar store guy and asked him if he could fix it. A day later I picked the guitar up and bought a laminated card with a whole bunch of ‘guitar chords’ on it. I quickly went home and huddled in my bedroom for the next 16 hours. I learned the G chord. Heaven. I was in Heaven. I learned the D chord. I almost learned the C chord and all of a sudden I could play a whole song, sort of. Really, that’s how it happened.

The summer that followed that fateful, spring day was the summer of song. I played along with some of my favorite songs. I was in awe. I couldn’t believe that songs were... for lack of a better word... EASY. The basic framework of the songs I liked consisted of 3 or 4 chords most of the time. Sometimes it was just 2 chords! I already knew 8 chords. Heaven.

I started humming my own melodies to my chords. HUH? Could it be that maybe I could somehow WRITE a song? Sure enough, one day in my father’s house in Plymouth, MI I sat down and actually wrote a whole song. I wrote it about a girl... of course. But it was a song. Nobody ever heard that song... EVER. Writing songs became my favorite thing in the world to do.

I met some guys at Eastern Illinois University, where I attended college. Greg Scalia taught me how to play some more chords. Frank Gerage taught me more about writing songs. He could play guitar really good AND bass. We started playing songs together at parties around campus. Then one day this dude walked up and said ‘I can play drums’!!! That was Pat Wagner. And he could play drums! We played songs by the BoDeans and REM. We played songs by the Indigo Girls and John Cougar. We met a guy who had a huge sounds system, Ken Reynolds. Kenny called me a singer/songwriter. So I showed the guys some of my songs.... and...that was the day my life changed courses. Pre-med had now become the school of rock (no copy write infringement intended)! We played some of the local bars and frat houses. Then we even branched out to another town not far away... yup... we were ‘on the road’!

I promised my Mom I would stay in college until I graduated. So I did. Then the band started playing a little more. By 1993 I headed to Chicago to live and go full time with the band. Heaven. We found a manager, John Wanzung, and we really hit the road. We toured from San Francisco to Key West and Martha’s Vineyard to Havasu, AZ! Throughout the 90’s we played around 200 shows a year. The band changed a few times... Mike Hall played guitar and Willis Petocki played bass. Steve Merchant played the drums until Bryan Resendiz (REZ) joined us. I made Chicago my home and the Unit, our touring RV, my home away from home. With the 2000’s more folks came and went- Big Al Wetzel played bass and Magoo strummed the guitar. Then Peter Bauschke started playing drums, Marty Williamson joined Magoo on lead guitar and Matt Longbons signed up to play bass! Throughout this time I was writing songs and learning some songs that the other guys wrote and we made CDs. We released, Hello Dave (self titled first cd), West, a Christmas CD, 16tons, Wicked Revelry, Perfect Day and finally Chicago Twang. We played rock festivals we played country festivals. We were played on triple A radio, college radio and mainstream country radio. We had ups and we had downs but we always played music and put smiles on the faces of people who sometimes drove hundreds of miles to see us.

I play music for a living.... Heaven. I’m so proud to have stood beside my band mates for so many years and create music that has become- as many have told me- ‘the sound track to their lives’. First dances, first dates and first babies has been our legacy.

For the past couple years I’ve been heading out of town on my own. I play shows at clubs, festivals and at people’s houses. I’ve been writing songs and recording them. I’m releasing my first batch of solo music in 2012.

I am HIMEBAUGH and I like to write and sing songs to make people smile.