"1975. I was five years old. Leedo Shuffle by Boz Skaggs. From the time I first heard that silky groove by master drummer Jeff Pocaro I was hooked. I didn't know it then, but music was about to become a lifelong obsession. After moving with my family to Santa Cruz, California, in 1977, I spent my adolescent and teenage years surfing classic waves, playing football and jamming with my best friend Steve in the family garage. Although school, football and surfing took up most of my available time, the drums were never far from my mind. Epic garage jams to the music of Van Halen, Iron Maiden, Metallica and other 80's hard rockers only served to increase my appetite for drumming. My first live gig in college was with a cover band that myself and some friends pieced together…we named ourselves after the method of payment for that first gig…"Free Beer". While at U.C. Berkeley, I dove into the local music scene listening to awesome bands such as The Berkeley Chill Factor, Primus, Blu-chunks, Missing Link, The JFK, The Fabulous Hedgehogs and many others. The one thing all these bands had in common were incredible drummers, and listening to these bands night after night was the beginning of the technical side of my musical education. In 1995 I recorded drum tracks for my first record with my band, Heavy Petting Zoo. A year later I was fortunate enough to be part of a group with Alex Skolnick called the Skol-Patrol, which featured Micheal Manring on bass. While my time with that group was brief (a handful of shows and an EP), I learned a lot about what it means to be a true professional musician. Over the next 2 years I gigged and recorded with bands such as Chrissy Mclean and Hoe, Mamalovdus and the Freaks of Nature. By 1999, I landed in sunny Southern California and began searching for my next gig. I played a few gigs here and there, but never really found a band that I truly wanted to be in. Lucky for me I didn't have to wait too long. Brian Kahanek and I met while recording tracks for one of those no money-no publishing sessions (cue the groan). While that group was short lived, our friendship and mutual musical interests have kept us busy writing, recording…and generally rocking for almost 7 1/2 years. Currently, we have 2 records out, Real Life and Suicide King. The latter was written and recorded with the newest member of the group, none other than the master of low end, bass player Sam Daleo. As a side note, a few years back I became increasingly frustrated with the skyrocketing price of drums and the length of time it took to get a custom kit. This led me to start my own company, CCCD (Cunningham Construction Custom Drums, a division of my construction company). One of my first kits was used for the recording of our first record, Real Life. In April of 2007, I finally completed my ultimate dream kit, a 9 piece collage of honey-maple stain and rock maple shells for our upcoming local gigs and tour. (FYI: I use all Zildjian cymbals, DW pedals, Vater Piccolo sticks and the kit is mounted on a Pearl rack). Pictures of a few of my kits and the tour kit are available at myspace.com/cccdrums.