"My earliest musical influences where through my dad, who was a singer in his teens and early twenties. He played a lot of Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennet, Nat King Cole, Tommy Dorsey and all that big band swing music in the house. My dad cut a demo 45 that my brother and I always loved to listen to. Most of my first influences were singers. Then at age 12 I went to my first rock concert and I was hooked. The next day I told my parents I wanted to learn how to play guitar. I started taking lessons. I wanted the spectacle of being a rock star. I was listening to Aerosmith, Foreigner, Ted Nugent and all the stuff you could see on Don Kirchner's shows. Fast forward 4 years later I saw Bruce Springsteen in concert and that changed everything. I wanted to write great songs, play guitar and sing and touch people's hearts.

Fast forward about 12 years after that I moved to California and met some great friends and musicians who turned me onto blues, reminded about the passion of music and that became my mission – I wanted to play like Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan. A couple years later, after I had moved back home to Pa., I started getting more into Dylan and the Band ( the Last Waltz, Clapton's Unplugged and Dylan's Unplugged became my high water mark ). Since then there has been a never ending list of singer songwriters - Jackson Browne, John Prine, Holly Williams, Willie Nelson, etc. Today all of those influences make up who I am musically."

Bands;

Section 8 1986 - 1990, The Electric Church 1993, The Mervel Dean Band 1994 - 1996 then 2003 - 2010, The ReeCliners 2007 - today. Dave Brulenski acoustic.