Someday is a flavor of light rock with soaring and tender melodies, lush arrangements and epic vocals by John Wenger.

7 MP3 Songs
ROCK: Modern Rock, POP: Power Pop



Details:
I came from a musical family, so I've been doodling on a piano for as long as I can remember. Our first piano was so old that half of the keys were missing chunks of ivory, jagged like some huge West Virginny smile, proudly showing off its unique blend of dried glue spots and unfinished wood. But to a five year old, that just helped give each key its own identity. When I first played a nice piano with all the ivory intact, I remember thinking, âpsh. So plain. This thing's got no personality.â

I wrote my piano piece at age 10, and my first song, lyrics and all, at age 12. No, you can't hear it. (I wrote a somewhat tortured power ballad at age 14 that I might actually let some of you hear one day, but only by special request, and only after I record it. And that's if I record it. Keep in mind, I probly won't record it.)

After a few tips from my cousin Ryan, who was training classically, I started teaching myself guitar in middle school. I never took voice lessons, but in high school I developed the habit of sneaking out of Study Hall and playing one of the spare pianos and trying to sing like Bono, and people who heard me told me they loved my voice, and that was enough to get me started on developing a singing style. I slaved away all summer as a dishwasher at Windows on the Bay so I could buy my first keyboard and midi sequencer, and at that point, I started composing much more ambitious music -- mostly orchestral works, and highly progressive rock. Tons of material poured out of me during this phase.

I was accepted to Peabody to study composition with a small Maryland State Scholarship. (It's funny, because I sort of invented that scholarship. The subdivision of the MD State Scholars award that I was competing for was for performing arts only, but I brought in recordings of my works, and showed three panel judges, and they basically shrugged and said, âman, that's really neat. You can have one too.â) I had a good GPA at Peabody, and I might have graduated had I been assigned a different professor and not Darth Sidious. But I was so miserable under his anti-tutelage that I left my second semester to study privately with another Peabody professor in his home.

After that point, my interest in rock and the record industry was neck and neck with my interest in composing for film and TV. So, for a while I was busy with both. I sang and played in a few local bands and recorded a few CD's that never got released in any significant way. Probably for the best. Meanwhile, I got a few big composing jobs with the History Channel, TLC, Discovery, National Geographic, along with a dozen short films and productions, including the History Channel's Emmy-nominated 3 hour special, JFK: A Presidency Revealed. Next I wrote and produced Orphan Project's debut release, which got some rave reviews from dozens of progress-rock rags.

'Someday' is not my first solo project, perse, but it is my first solo project that I have ever chosen to release. : ) I'm very happy with how it turned out. I've got a lot of momentum behind what I'm doing now, and this little EP is just the beginning. I've got tons more material cooking as I type. So stay tuned!