WATCH: National Champ Semi-Pro Football Player, former Gymnastics Coach and asskicking Rockstar?!

“Crank It Up” has been playing during NASCAR on ESPN, but it's actually inspired by a wholly different American pastime…FOOTBALL. In fact, many of my most popular songs from my previous band Baptized By Fire are about football, including most notably “Juggernaut” which people usually assume was inspired by my love of comic books. Not so, whenever I am writing about physically beating the odds I can’t help but subconsciously write about football. I began my football career in 6th Grade playing with a P.A.L. league outside of school. I believe this gave me a major advantage when going out for my middle school team. I ended up as Captain of my squad and starting full back and linebacker. What I lacked in size, I made up for in speed and sheer determination. In High School as a freshman I was brought up to the Varsity and started in games as a nose tackle, a position usually reserved for very large players. I would use my speed to break through the line and disrupt every play I could. Junior year, I was sad to leave my team and long time teammates behind when I moved to Ward Melville High School. I started as a Free Safety there, but was given limited chances to show what I could do with the ball in my hands. My senior year I mainly road the bench as the defense got switched up, but my big break came in the second to last game when the starting full back was injured and I was finally sent in. I ran more yards in that one game than the previous full back had ran all season; 280 yards for 3 touchdowns. I was finally validated. The next and final game of the High School season would see me triple teamed and largely shut down, but it rekindled my fire to play and to win. None of my teams had been particularly good and I so desperately wanted to be on a team that cared as much as I did and worked as hard. Initially, I attended CW Post so that I could go out for the football team, but a long commute and extra curricular activities like the school newspaper, radio station and TV station took up so much of my time, I decided against it. A few years later, I still had the itch and was invited to try out for a semi pro team called the Brooklyn Mariners. A team known for winning. I was small, but ferocious, I was invited on after the first practice and quickly became the bullet to the ball on special teams where I excelled, lighting up the ball carriers of every team we met. Three years later, I was down in Florida playing for a national championship! I had the first tackle of the game and the very last, as well as plenty of great plays in between, I did it, I was a CHAMPION. It was one of the greatest days of my life, my championship ring one of my most prized possessions and though injuries would eventually force me into retirement, no one can ever take away my accomplishment that year. Around the same time, I started practicing gymnastics in order to enhance live shows with, Baptized By Fire. Within a few months of attending adult gymnastics sessions I took a job as a coach and began to excel far beyond my previous, meager, self taught gymnastic skills. One night, during the finale of a BXF show I threw two backflips in a row slam landing on my knee TWICE. I was fine for a few minutes still adrenalized from the performance, but within 10 minutes or so my right leg began to swell and I could not bend my knee even a little bit. At the time, I didn’t have any insurance, I laid in my then girlfriends' bed for a week without much improvement. I finally called my football team’s trainer and told him the situation. He invited me down to their facility and helped nurse my knee back to health for FREE. I got very lucky in getting free help, but I had popped my bursa sack in my knee and tore my PCL, a very difficult thing to do by itself, but I did. Surgery wasn’t an option for many reasons and while I initially purchased a knee brace and went back to playing Football, more injuries eventually took me out of both sports. Over the past few years I would come to realize that I have been nursing a number of untreated injuries since I was a teenager and have been slowly getting to the bottom of all the damage I have done to my body. These injuries have kept me in a perpetual state of discomfort for most of my life and I'm really glad to finally be on the road to recovery. I look forward to fully healing myself, so that I can be an inspiration to others in the same bad situation. Living in pain sucks pretty hard, but I don’t regret my decision to play football and do gymnastics in the least, in fact, athletics have provided me with some of the purest elation and happiness that I've ever felt in my life. As well as some pain, but to me, pain is just the artist’s journey. Check out the ridiculous shape I am in during a live performance at the peak of my semipro football playing and gymnastics coaching, you may spot me

throwing a few backflips in there as well….