Lord, did I ever. I mostly look back on my time in the Canberra music scene as a being one of a lot of soul searching. I listen to a lot of different styles of music so when I hit the scene I was eager to try out anything musical. I've played in bar bands, Jazz bands, Latin bands etc. and basically racked up around 100 gigs give or take in Canberra alone (I kept a diary of all the gig dates). Probably the only band really worth mentioning is now Melbourne based Reggae/Dub band Agency Dub Collective which I was a part of back in 2001 - 2002 (as their keyboard player). That was a fuckin' wild ride to say the least and I met some characters man. Back then we were more of a Funk band. I'm still really good friends with their founder and guitarist, Elrond (who still lives in Canberra and travels to Melbourne for rehearsals and gigs) and their then Saxophone player, Paul. After Agency I started a Jazz/Rock Fusion band which Elrond was also a part of and was the only mainstay in the band besides myself. The band played my own compositions, which were really influenced by Weather Report and Cannonball Adderly. There were many, many more. Here's a clue to what I was thinking back in those days though. I was in a Latin band that was fun in the beginning but was a revolving door of musicians, especially drummers that never really got a momentum going (we did play on one of the main stages of the Multi-Cultural Festival two years in a row which was a good experience for me). I love Cuban music but when I'd drive to rehearsals I'd be listening to Black Sabbath, Fates Warning and Savatage. At rehearsals I'd tell some of the band members that what I really wanted was to start a Metal band...you can imagine how that ended.
I took a year off from gigging to figure out what it was I wanted to do and how I was gonna get there (basically, I took the time out to re-evaluate. I picked up the pieces, went back to square one and figured it was time for a change...lol). I did jam with some musicians who were into Metal but I couldn't find anybody who was into what I wanted to do. That was around the time Nevermore came to Australia and I saw T.M. for the first time and I knew that that was what I wanted to do...fortunately, and as fate would have it, they needed a bass player not long after.