1. Music Bio

Will began playing guitar first at age 6, but quickly got frustrated with it and put it down. His interest was rekindled in his teens, and in 1987 he picked the guitar back up and began practicing and playing in earnest. After playing for a bit on an old semi-hollowbody he had inherited from his grandfather, he bought his first guitar (a "Memphis" superstrat style electric) and amp (Fender Sidekick 25 Reverb) with the proceeds from selling some baseball cards (he collected cards as a kid). Not being happy he couldn't get the "Metallica" type of guitar tone out of this setup, he quickly added an Ibanez Metal Charger distortion pedal and compressor/sustainer, and off he went. A few months later he saw a great deal on a Washburn electric, which was marked down 50% because of a paint scratch. He bought that guitar and still uses it a lot today, recording several tracks on Darkness into Light with it.

Will's earliest influence was Ace Frehley of Kiss, who wasn't the most technical guitarist in the world but inspired Will to go from playing air guitar to playing guitar for real. At the time Will was very into the '80s metal scene, and that's the style of music he took up. He learned a lot of early Metallica stuff, a lot of stuff from the various L.A. metal bands, but really got inspired to practice by the "shredders" like Yngwie Malmsteen, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Vinnie Moore, Tony MacAlpine, etc. When Yngwie's "Black Star" came out in one of the popular guitar magazines, Will spent about three months practicing until he could play it note-for-note.

Will was always more interested in writing his own music than learning other artists' songs, and from the time he learned the basic chords he was writing his own songs. He has a collection of close to 100 sophomoric '80s style metal songs, sophomoric because of lyrics you'd expect from a teenager with no life experience beyond high school ("cruisin' down at the local mall," etc.). Will played with a group of friends that dubbed their band "Metal Militia" after the Metallica song, due in large part because all of the members were Air Force brats.

After high school, Will went on to college in a small town in Missouri where there was no rock scene to speak of. If you wanted to play live, it had better be country/western. So, his college years were spent practicing and writing and recording with a Fostex X-26 4-track recorder. He gave lessons here and there and jammed with friends, but didn't get involved with a band (since there was nowhere to play anyway).

After college Will kind of got away from the guitar as he focused on his career. This was especially true once he started writing books in 1999, and from late 1998-early 2001 Will hardly touched a guitar, playing maybe 15-30 minutes a week at most. Some of that was due to time constraints, but a lot of it was also due to not having much inspiration. When he picked up the guitar, nothing new was coming out, and he felt like he was just spinning his wheels. In early 2001 he got inspired to do an album of instrumental guitar music, and the ideas for Darkness into Light began to take shape. Realizing that God was leading him back into music, Will began playing guitar with renewed vigor, and the creative juices started flowing again. Many of the songs that appear on the album came together quickly, though Will didn't really start recording until later in the year. He isn't sure what is next after Darkness into Light, though he would be interested in forming a Christian metal band fronted by a good vocalist, with lyrics boldly evangelizing for Christ.

2. Christian Testimony

Growing up I had been baptized Catholic when I was very young, and my family went to church for awhile, but my family was mostly non-religious. You certainly wouldn't identify my parents as Christians by the way they lived their lives. That's not a knock, just the reality for many families where in my case my great grandparents were strong Christians, my grandparents were Christian and took my parents' generation to church weekly while they were growing up. My parents' generation, even though they went to church growing up, gradually fell away from the church after being out in the world on their own. By the time my generation came along, there was essentially no church involvement beyond the first few years. Like most kids I was thoroughly indoctrinated in secular humanism in public school, and like most I blindly accepted what I was being taught as "fact."

I fell furthest from God in college (1990-1994), when I would have categorized myself as an atheist if asked. In the years since many things have happened to me personally, and I slowly began to realize that I was either lucky beyond belief or that what some would call an incredible string of "coincidences" was really something more powerful working in my life. Part of my conversion was also related to my trying to prove to myself intellectually that God didn't exist. I finally came to a point where I couldn't honestly tell myself that there wasn't a divine creator responsible for our universe. As I examined my preconceived notions of religion and my common misconceptions about secular science, I realized there was some gaping holes that naturalism has, and simply no adequate way of explaining something like creation without resorting to supernatural explanations (though so called "natural" causes which violate the physical laws of the universe).

While working through the science issues and such gave me an intellectual understanding of God's existence, that was only one piece of the equation. The other was trying to determine which religion "got it right." As I studied I found that only Christianity really makes sense and is consistent with the world we observe around us. I also came to understand that Christianity as practiced by many people isn't Christianity. Much of my prior hatred of Christianity came from the inconsistency and often outright hypocrisy I observed in the people who professed their faith in Christ. Biblical Christianity and the sins of fallible people aren't the same though, and as I learned what the Bible really said (compared to what I had been told it said and what I had observed others practice), I found truth.

I'm very much a fundamentalist, believing the Bible is either entirely true or it must entirely false. I don't have a lot of patience with "church tradition" for the sake of tradition, and get frustrated at the denominational bickering that divides so many Christians. I believe in the Genesis account of creation, in six literal days, and that there are enough problems with "scientific" dating methods to conclude that we don't have any real evidence that the earth is billions of years old as suggested. I believe that without a literal creation, a literal garden of Eden, and a literal original sin, then the concept of a saviour makes no sense whatsoever.

I've been accepted into seminary and plan on starting next fall, and at some point transitioning from my current career in information technologies into some kind of full time ministry.