I was born  in New York City to Ena and John Strevens who had just arrived from Great  Britain.  My father is from Cardiff Wales and my mother was from Dublin Ireland, my mother's father  was from Yugoslavia and his mother(my great-grandmother) was Russian and her maiden name was Stravinsky and there is a direct relation to the composer Igor Stravinsky, so that is where I like to think my musical addiction started(it sounds good anyhow). We moved  to New jersey a few years later and I can still remember being 5 years old and my Aunty Rita giving me a Beatles album for my birthday. The album was called "Beatles For Sale" and it changed my life. I knew right then and there, that was what I wanted to do the rest of my life,(I wanted to play  as much as I could and not get rich doing it) I didn't know how, what or why but I was hooked. I know it sounds crazy that a 5 year old could think like that but honest to God it's true, when I hear that album today it still makes the hair stand up on the back of my head (I'm listening to it right now as I am writing). I got my first guitar at age 7 for Christmas, it was an old used Harmony acousticbut it was good enough to take lessons on and I loved it. I took lessons religiously for 5 years forming my first band "Flyte" at 12 and playing our first gig at a friend's family reunion, getting paid $80.00. When I was 14 as a freshman at Howell High School I tried out and made the school jazz band (probaly because I was the only guitarist who could read music). During this time I met a few other guys who were also in  jazz band, and formed a rock band. The keyboard player's father took a liking to us and appointed himself our "manager".  He got us gigs  playing Bar mitzvahs and weddings .  By the time I was 15 I was starting to get tired of the wedding scene, I just wanted to rock out in jeans and a t-shirt and play the music I felt like, not the required Standard music you have to play at weddings. The seventies were an amazing time for music, there was a new sound coming out of Southern California and everyone was hooked. The term singer-songwriter was born, artists like The Eagles, Jackson Browne and Warren Zevon were blasting out of fm radios everywhere and I couldn't get enough of it. It's still my favorite music and when you hear it on the radio today it's timeless. I had met some other kids from South Jersey and wound up joining thier bands. We played every weekend at high school dances, CYO's,fairs and parties. You name it, we played it. We even played a concert at Princeton University. Also at this time, the other guitarist in the band was playing in his father's country and western band and I was soon asked to fill in on bass and vocals which was my introduction to country music. We traveled all over  playing real life "Honkey-Tonks" .  It was such a great time in my life, it cemented my belief that this was all I wanted to do for a living and it gave me a musical education that I carry with me to this day. However all was not good, around this same time there was an eerie stench that was starting to pervade the music scene, it was later identified by the name of Disco. It was made up of a never changing drum track coupled with a pounding bass line, a guitar usually playing the same chord over and over and finally a high pitched singer wailing out some mindless lyrics. Like zombies, people with no musical taste were drawn to it. Bars that used to have rock bands were now converting to "Discos" where a disc jockey would spin records of this "inane" music; I really thought civilization was doomed! Fortunatly (for the rest of the world), just as quick as Disco appeared it was gone. Occasionally you can still hear it at weddings but it's all but vanished from the radio. Right after disco came the New Wave sound which was basically a dance rock genre of music. It was 1981 and I was playing in a top 40 dance band called "The Distractions". We played every major club in the tri-state area and had a blast doing it. Bands like The Ramones, Blondie, The Go Go's and The Cars made up our repertoire. Around this time I had moved to Asbury Park and was living in our practice studio, sleeping on the floor. Ah, the life of a working musician! I didn't care; I loved what I was doing. I had been writing songs since I was 14 but at this point I started to take it a little more serious, and the guys in the band liked what I was writing, so we started a side project(band) playing all original music that I wrote. We liked it so much that we stopped playing cover music and started thinking about trying to get a record contract. One of the downsides of being in an original band is you wind up playing for free. We played clubs like The Stone Pony, The Fast Lane and CB GB's sometimes to packed houses. We were opening up for artists like The Smithereens, The Bongos and NRBQ but the policy was to pay the bands approx $100.00 a set. We released 2 records of material throughout the 80's and came pretty close to a record deal a few times but it always managed to escape us. By 1989 we had been playing non stop for 10 years and everyone decided it was time for a break. I had always been involved in acting since I was a kid and so I decided to pursue that avenue while the band was on hiatus. Acting was a lot more lucrative for me, I immediatly got work in commercials and extra work in films and tv. I was in The Screen Actors Guild so I got union scale pay when ever I worked. After I worked on the film "Presumed Innocent" with Harrison Ford I had earned enough money for medical insurance benefits, right in the nick of time as

my 2nd son was about to be born. Now even though I only worked as an extra, it gave me the final earnings tp make my quota and it also gave me a chance to meet Harrison Ford who was a cool guy and we spoke for some time about working as an actor. As a result of that meeting (and the SAG insurance) we named my son Harrison. Through out the 90's I was active playing occasional gigs with the band and acting but it all came to a holt when my very close friend and bassist Don McCloskey suddenly died at the age of 37. It was 1998 and for the first time in my life I didn't feel like playing music or acting. All along I had been earning my living as a carpenter and I just decided to do that and concentrate on my family. A year later I found myself recording a bunch of songs I had written either about Don or the times of being in the band with him. In 2004 I recorded another CD of original country music which I was really starting to listen to a lot. In 2005 my mother passed away from cancer. At the funeral I ran into my old friend/drummer Herb Van Note. I hadn't seen him in a year or so and he was now playing with a country band called "After The Reign". He was describing the types of songs and the gigs they were doing and it sounded pretty cool. I told him if they ever needed another guitarist/singer to let me know. About 2 months later I was asked to join and this October (2010) it will be 6 years I'm in the band. When I first met them I thought that there was something mentally wrong with each one of them so I knew I was in good company, but honestly I truly love playing with these guys. Although we have just released our debut cd  I am writing songs for the follow up, the current song titles I have wriiten are "A Mother's Touch", "The Older We Get, The Better We Were", "Two Of You", "How Did We Ever Fall So Far Apart", Wilder Than The West Wind Blows", "Darlene", and "Shooting Star". There are more in the works but those are the ones I've finished- let's see how they work when we are done.
LOOKING BACK:
Phewww!!! What a lot of hot air! I feel like I just came from confession!! Hope this bio doesn't sound too self serving but I tried to tell the story as I remember it(Im missing a few brain cells). It sure evoked a lot of old memories and it reminds me of how many of my friends and family are no longer with us, most of whom played a pivotal role in making it all happen. Although I never really hit "The Big Time" I wouldn't change anything in my life or the way it happened. I have met so many of my influences and had the pleasure of hanging out with them. People like Jackson Browne, Todd Rundgren,  Bruce Springsteen, Steve Earle,John Prine,James Taylor, Gram Parker and Paul Kelly to name a few. I also became friends with Warren Zevon and saw him right up until he passed away in 03. I have worked on so many movies and I met many of my idols like Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, Russell Crowe and others. I have 2 beautiful sons who continue to blow me away with everything they do, my wife Heather of 23 years who has always supported any of my artistic outings and made it easy for me to continue to do what I love and still believes in me (I think). Out of everyone in my life I would have to give credit to my mother as my biggest influence as she bought me my first guitar and drove me to lessons, paid for them, drove me to practice and gigs before I could drive and NEVER  complained or thought I was wasting my time. Even though I'm older now, I still feel like that 16 year old kid who only wanted to play in a band for a living. My favorite pastime is still to just sit down with my guitar and play. I never grow tired of it or the dream that I could still make "The Big Time". And with that being said  Id like to leave you with a quote from a Warren Zevon song.

"some prayers never reach the sky"
" some wars never end"
"some dreams just  refuse to die"
"next time Id rather break than bend"
            "I am a renegade"