At 13 years old, like so many kids of his generation ... right up through today's generation, he jumped on the Rock 'n Roll band wagon, teaching himself to play guitar, bass and piano. By 14, his band got a gig opening for Richie Havens RIP, at the Café Wha in Greenwich Village in NYC. 'We were all so young, my mother had to drive us to the Club, with all of our equipment, wait and drive us home again'!

Eric's involvement with Rock continued throughout High School, College ... and beyond. After graduation from College, Eric took a year-long tour of Europe, which from a musical perspective, was certainly an eye-opener! Realizing that young kids of his own generation playing Rembetika in clubs in the Plaka in Athens or Flamenco in Spain - who were every bit as soulful as Jimi Hendrix made a deep and lasting impression!

Well, so did the early Hip Hop artists and producers of the 80s and 90s! 'Babyface is still my hero! No matter who else comes along - the Neptunes or Kanye, as gifted as they admittedly are! ... Babyface was the first to create modern RnB as we know it IMHO'.

Capitalizing on modern digital recording, Eric built his own digital home studio and started writing tracks and producing young RnB and Hip Hop artists ... for 15 years.

In a two-week break between producing engagements, largely out of boredom, Eric recorded a CD using his own instrumental tracks from his work as a producer, but using his Spanish guitar instead of singers or rappers. He (timidly) put the tracks on Myspace (in 2005 ... before Facebook) and was very surprised by the reaction. 'Within a few months, I had 500,000 Myspace fans. This was a bigger reaction than we got from any of our RnB or Hip Hop artists!'

Putting 2-and-2 together, Eric understood that the global appeal of merging contemporary RnB beatz with more traditional 'old world' music held a lot of appeal on a global scale.

Since then, Eric has created 2 more World Music fusion CDs and is just abut to launch a 4th this summer. 'All 3 albums are playing very actively on most Internet Radio stations and Social Media sites ... and selling quite well.'

For Eric, 'This is the beginning of a very exciting journey. That Indonesia, Turkey and Mexico are my three biggest countries, with my own country coming in at around 7 or 8 ... and ages 14-17 is my biggest fan base ... is positively weird!' ... but that is what the Internet is all about ... it's VERY democratic!

'While I never in a million years intended this to be a political statement, one can't help notice that music from around the World, from the US, from Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Africa can all work together so well cannot be overlooked! In the end, we are all the same!'

You can find out more about Eric on his website.

Eric 2

The New Art Of Urban Flamenco

Native Unit