Michael Cardenas

1970 saw my Mother in labor for 24 hours to deliver me at Beverly Hospital in Montebello, California. She was employed there as a nurse the day her water broke and my Father worked there as a janitor. In my youth the three of us Roberto, Sara & I lived in Whittier, California. I got my first acoustic guitar at 10 and it was impossible to play because it hurt my hands. A year later I was presented my first electric guitar by my Mother's new boyfriend. It was the sort of offering you give to a son who is grieving from a divorce and rejecting the new replacement for his father. A year later the stigma attached to that guitar led me to acquire a proper electric instrument and private lessons to further my knowledge of music. Around this same time I tried my hand at acting and learned alot about the stage, but music proved to overshadow any of my efforts in theatre. I was locked in my room days at a time studying theory & composition. My teenage years were spent playing punk rock and metal. In 1988 I attended the Musician's Institute while simultaneously cultivating a close relationship with funk music. Somewhere in my early twenties I came upon folk music and learned how to sing. That would last for a few years until I put the guitar and songwriting down out of frustration. I never felt like I fit in any of the bands that I had joined. So I turned to woodwinds and jazz for nourishment. I learned flute, bass clarinet and alto saxophone playing the music of my heroes. Through that experience I somehow ended up on bass and singing again. The music which came from that time in my life is very special and pretty. The comfort of it was equalized by the trauma of losing my Father to cancer in 2000. As result I came back to guitar and tried playing death metal. People really do love that music, but it's rare when bands can retain motivation long enough to make a career out of it. The most natural thing for me to do now is write sad and often socially caustic music.