Music, especially the Blues, has always been a big part of Aaron’s life. He grew up in a very creative family so music and the arts were part of his life from day one.
His love for the Blues and Harmonica started when he had the chance to spend a weekend with the Country Blues Legends SONNY TERRY & BROWNIE MCGEE in 1976. It wasn’t until many years after the life-changing meeting with the legends the Aaron started down the musical road of the Blues and Harmonica playing.
He started behind the scenes in the music industry working as a recording engineer for many years and having the pleasure of working with many of the great Canadian session and live players. Music was getting deeper and deeper into his soul.
During this time, Aaron played bass, although he never felt a deep connection with the instrument… however, his love for music and making it continued to burn deeply.
Aaron had always found great solace and support in music. It wasn’t until he was going through his father’s records that he reconnected to the Blues… and it was the start of his journey with the Harmonica!
Almost 20 years ago wanting to learn the instrument by trying to copy the masters of the old country styles like Sonny Terry, DelFord Bialy and Sonny Boy Williamson I /II and quickly realizing that it was just too hard it is to do, so he then started to go to all the live Blues shows he could which sparked the interest and discovery of the CHICAGO Styles harmonica players like Little Walter, Junior Wells, Big Walther Horton, and Charlie Musselwhite lead to him going to all the clubs around Toronto and trying to learn from all the master he could. After a few years of this, he quickly became friends with some of the city best players and even one of the worlds best! “It was at this point I realized that this little instrument is not easy and I needed lots of help to learn how to really play it.” It was then that he started getting lessons from people like Michael Pickett, Mark “Bird” Stafford, Carlos Del Junco to name a few. This lead to Aaron playing at local singer-songwriter jams with a few friends, sitting in with some of the best Blues bands in town! And now the Blues took a real hold of him, he was hooked!
Aaron formed a couple of duos that would go to all the jams they could which lead to the beginning of getting some little shows and even booking some of his teachers as guests (which got them a bigger audience) and forced him to work harder at learning and growing as a player. It was at this point that he met a few other players that wanted to put a band together. So Aaron found a little club that was looking to have live music and even a weekly band to host a Jam, so SECTION 8 Rhythm and Blues Band was born. Section 8 played together weekly for about 8 years which gave Aaron a lot of time to learn, practice and grow as a player. It was during these years that he not only grew but had the chance to play with many other musicians which gave he the opportunity to get asked to guest with some of the best Blues band in town at the time and even asked to record some songs on some up and coming artists. His first major break in the recording came when he was asked to do a song with DUBMATIX, who is a world-renowned reggae dub artist, doing the track “CHAMPIONSHIP SOUND” from his 2006 CD Atomic Subsonic and again in 2018 on SLY & ROBBIE meet DUBMATIX Overdubbed.