I signed to EMI records at the age of 18 with ‘The Beyond'. We recorded two critically acclaimed albums “Crawl” and “Chasm” the latter being recorded in New York with Jim ‘Foetus' Thirlwell producing. Toured the UK, Europe and USA supporting bands such as – Red Hot Chili Peppers, Soundgarden and Living Colour.

Following the split of ‘The Beyond' I joined ‘Cable'. We signed to Infectious records and recorded the album “Down Lift The Uptrodden”.

We secured two sessions on the John Peel show on Radio One and toured the UK, Europe (including Reading Festival) and supported bands such as – Ash, Girls Against Boys, Boss Hog and Oasis.

I first met the ‘Therapy?' lads in the early 90s when ‘The Beyond' and ‘Therapy?' toured together. We were part of a turning tide in the music scene – both being hailed as hard, aggressive sounding bands with a fresh approach, rather than most of the clichéd poodle perm nonsense that was around at the time. One reason for this is that my early playing was influenced by the then embryonic dance scene. I recall playing along to Techno white label releases for practice, and incorporating similar patterns into the band I was playing for at the time.

In March 2002 I bumped into Andy Cairns (Therapy? singer/guitarist) at a gig where he told me they were looking for a new drummer and would I be interested. As a kind of audition/baptism of fire, I was asked to play a headline festival show in Portugal. As we approached the date a 2 day rehearsal session was arranged, but due to the band's other commitments, that rehearsal went down to 1 day, which then went down to an afternoon and finally finished up being one run through of the 16 song headline set. Yep, one run through!!! That evening we were on a plane to the gig.

Worried? The word doesn't even come close.

(The gig actually went really well.)

Over the Christmas of 2002 we recorded the album “High Anxiety” and during that session I was asked to be a full time member of Therapy?. We did 3 weeks of recording and, being new to the ranks, a lot of the writing of drum parts/arrangements was done in the studio. A real ‘thinking on your feet' experience.

The lead single from “High Anxiety”, “If It Kills Me”, was released in March 2003. During the run up to the release disaster struck as I broke my arm 4 days before we were due to shoot a promo video. I managed to get through the video, taking a ridiculous amount of painkillers and doing all the playing with my left hand!!

Start of May 2003 the album “High Anxiety” was released worldwide and we did extensive European and UK tours. At the end of that tour we recorded our first live DVD in the bands original hometown of Belfast which saw a sold out show welcome home the band.

Summer of 2003 kept us busy, playing festivals across Europe and we finished up this run supporting ‘The Rolling Stones' at a sold out show in Belgium.

“Scopophobia”, our live DVD, was released November 2003. We followed with another extensive European tour this time also taking in Russia, the Czech Republic and Poland.

Early 2004 saw us back to the original format of a power trio (completed by bassist Michael McKeegan) and we toured as special guests to ‘The Wildhearts' as a way of re-introducing the 3 piece. This gave us the opportunity to debut new material live and to jam some new ideas at soundchecks.

The writing process began before the tour though and we'd kept each other serviced with demo cds/minidiscs of various ideas for the new album. This unusual process is due to the three of us living in different parts of the UK. Once we had stockpiled enough ideas we got together to rehearse and arrange them and after 3 weeks we had 19 songs ready for the studio.

June 2004 saw the three of us (plus producer Pete Bartlett) lock ourselves in a sweltering studio recording what was to become “Never Apologise Never Explain”, the bands 10th album in a 15 year career. As we were back to a three piece we really wanted to capture a raw, focused, live feel so we set ourselves a 2 week recording period which saw most days start at 10am and finish at 1am the following morning.

“Never Apologies Never Explain” was released on September 27th and an intensive round of promotion began. An appearance at the Kerrang Awards saw us giving out an award for Best Songwriter swiftly followed by a series of club ‘DJ' nights and record shop in-store gigs.

Critical response was been amazing right across the board, from the metal mags (Kerrang 4/5, Rock Sound 8/10) to huge circulation European ‘lifestyle' magazines (Humo/Belgium)-“guitars like an out of control bulldozer”, Nieuw Review (Holland)-“Therapy? have delivered the rock cd of the year!”.

October 04 saw the release of the single ”Rise Up” and the edgy video was shown on various music channels and live sessions were recorded for BBC Radio One and XFM. Album reviews and interviews were published throughout the international press and we received a healthy response from radio in the UK and mainland Europe.

Nov/Dec 04 and March/April 05 saw the band tour the UK and Europe extensively.

In June 05 we released the 2nd single from “Never Apologies Never Explain”, “Rock You Monkeys” to coincide with our appearance at Download Festival, Castle Donington. Throughout this summer we've played much of the European festival circuit.

Last Saturday (8th Oct) saw us play our final gig of the year at the Ternat Festival in Belgium.

Now we are beavering away starting work on the new album, looking forward to a release in 2006.

Throughout the years of playing professionally, I have also been teaching drums. I gained my ‘Certificate of Teaching' through the Royal Schools of Music in 2001. When I'm not away on tour, I currently teach approximately 50 pupils per week.