I could go chronologically, and tell you that I was born in Okinawa, Japan, a navy brat. My Dad was flying airplanes off of aircraft carriers when he was 23, which to me is way more impressive than anything I've ever done. I lived for most of my more impressionable years in Berlin, which at the time was a walled fortress - a pretty cool place to grow up, though. Had you asked me at age 12 what I hoped to be when I grew up, I'd have told you, 'a major league ballplayer.' A few years later, once I'd realized the fact that I wasn't particularly big, strong or fast might hinder my big league prospects, I looked myself in the mirror (I actually did this - sorry), and asked,"what is it you really wanna do?" The answer came back twofold. One part of me considered (it was nearing the time to start applying for colleges) applying to the naval academy at Annapolis, shaving my head, and working to become an astronaut (I've always thought 'big'); my other self thought it'd be more fun to grow my hair, go to Berkeley, study law (masochist), but keep playing music, and maybe someday be a rock-star. Well, the Berkeley idea prevailed, but the music bug brought me to Southern Cal my sophomore year, to Berklee College of Music my junior, then back to Cal my senior year to finish up.

The year after I graduated had me playing on the steps of Sproul Plaza with an open guitar case, when this really cute girl came and sat to watch. She didn't hook me up with any coin, but I did manage to score her phone number. I walked back to my place and said to my roommate, Dave (later to become Dave of the Counting Crows), that I'd met my future wife. It was true. Six years later (within which I'd sold all my stuff and tried to move to England - got stopped at customs and sent back - ended up in NYC, where Pam joined me and we played the streets for a living; put together a really cool band called The Chairs; moved back to the Bay Area, where Chairs broke up; moved to L.A. to join my favorite band of the time, What Is This; started another band called Dharma Bums, and later Apostles, who got signed to an upstart label called Victory/Polygram, which subsequently folded, not to mention the fact that I think I've just completed history's longest parenthetical thought) we were married.

Fast forward to Rob, Jimmy, Charlie and Bret (Apostles) sitting at Cat & Fiddle in Hollywood, wondering what the hell had just happened. We'd been "signed" - every musician's dream - but rather than deflecting groupies backstage at Wembley, we were tipping a last beer (now that we'd been "dropped"), having decided to go our own ways and see if we might just end up together again someday, in some other formation, in some other place (my idea - though I probably didn't really mean it, just wanted to get the hell out of L.A.). Well, next comes Train?and if you wanna know more about that, you might as well hit "trainline." So there's the chronological concept. Another way to do it would be to describe musical influences. In this case I'd have to start with this English band that called themselves THE BEATLES. I could probably stop there, but I'd be forgetting David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, The Stones, Hendrix, Skynyrd, Aerosmith, Peter Gabriel, Neil Young, JT, XTC, The Replacements, and more recently Elliott Smith and Gillian Welch.

What else? I can just say that I've always felt just a little bit "different." And I can't even explain what I really mean by that. I just have a way of seeing things differently. Maybe it comes from the Berlin thing (I've recently come back into contact with some of my old buds, and we all seem to be a little 'different' in somewhat the same way). Maybe it's something to do with the fact that I tend not to take things at face value. You could consider me a "skeptic," in the pure sense of the word: "?a person slow to believe, or ready to question." Without getting too deeply into my love of Krishnamurti, and how I feel humanity would be so much better off if we could all look deeply into our pre-conditoning (man, now I'm losing them), you could just take me at my word, or watch me at a meet-n-greet sometime. Or consider the fact that when my kids asked me what animal I'd wanna be in the next life, I answered, "a tree." And I meant it.

Among the things that blow my mind is the fact that moving walkways, rather than helping us to get somewhere quicker, have made it so we can be slowly carried along without having to move our legs. We left California for the Pacific Northwest because we were tired of the relentless sunshine (I've long wondered who decided that hot and sunny equals "good," and overcast or rainy is "bad"). My favorite colors are green and grey. The thought of leaving a bunch of stuff behind when I'm dead makes me uncomfortable. To me, if I can just have given that last guitar away before I say goodbye?you see, I am different. I could go on and on. I think the planet would be better off if humans never existed. Not that I don't appreciate the works of Nabokov or Tom Robbins, or the way Barry Bonds turns on a fastball, but just that we seem to skew the balance. I think tigers are damned cool. And I'd never think of shooting a bear. Stuff like that. And I think drug-addiction should be saved for old age. If you really need to change your reality, why not wait 'til it starts to kind of suck. On my grave-stone I wanna inscribe?'Finally - No Plans'. But hopefully that's no time real soon. For now I hope to keep making music, hanging out with my family, and waiting for the rain. Hope that gives you some idea. - RH