I got into by music at an early age probably because I was the youngest in my family and all of my older siblings were into the great music of the 60,s and early 70's. I grew up listening to the Moody Blues, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Pink Floyd, Led Zepplin, Chick Corea, Jimi Hendrix, all the great bands of that era. The first concert I went to was ELP at the RPI Fieldhouse in Troy NY, I was seventeen, that was a show I will never forget. As a child I would play an old pump organ we had in our living room, my first attempt at playing a musical instrument. Later I started messing around with a Hawiian guitar that was sitting in the closet. Then my oldest brother came home with a beautiful green Aria diamond ES 335 copy from Japan when he was in the navy during the Veitnam war. I'd mess around it when the opportunity arose, some years later he asked if I wanted to trade for my Hondo acoustic that I had at the time. I still have that Aria guitar. I have other tools in the shed however, including a Black Strat that I built to the specs of David Gilmour's famous ax, among several others. I've also recently gotten back into the Keyboards with a Behringer synth and other digital pianos. I didn't really do a lot of jammin' with other people until my brother Rick moved back home from Manchester VT in the early 80's. The two of us plus Andy Wright formed our band The Outside Agitators. We would jam as a trio then Andy's brother Mark joined in as well as other musicians too. I would also jam with my nephew Scott and friend Willy Austin. During my time with the Outside Agitators I got into the punk scene and bands like Black Flag, Sex Pistols, Bad Brains, Minor Threat and more of the quintessential punk bands of that time and I gotta say I got hooked. We covered a lot of songs from these bands and when we played parties pretty much blew everyone away. At that time everyone else was covering 80's pop bands so audiences didn't know what to make of us. It was great. Then as happens when we mellow out, we went our seperate ways for many years. Then as fate would have it we got back together in 2002 with a new guitarist Conrad Pederson and recorded some new spontanious material which I think is pretty cool. You can find this as well as earlier original music on the Outside Agitators website bdskiff61.wix.com/outside-agitators . After we wrapped up those sessions I married and moved to Pittsfield Ma. where I'm producing solo projects as well as jammin with Rick and  friends. Music has always filled a big void in my life and keeping it going keeps me goin. So keep enjoying music where-ever you are and as John Lodge from the Moody Blues puts it, " Keep the Faith" .