User:Ernie Basaldua

Ernie B. was born on October 10th, 1966 in St. Charles Illinois, a suburb of the Chicagoland area, grew up listening to his father play country/surf rock guitar and would go with him, at a very young age, to the local taverns and listen to him play. He also listened to his uncle who played lead guitar in a rock band called "The Weed" back in the early 70's. It was hard not to hear his uncle's band rehearse using full stack Marshall amps in his grandmother's garage. Ernie B. started playing drums at the age of 9 and quickly started playing with along side with his father and uncle. His family moved to South Texas in 1980 and Ernie B. soon picked up his father's guitar, and started his first band Madfox. By the age of 14, they were getting gigs around the area. At age of 16 he would form his second band Excalibur. He met Raul Garcia in high school, as they were both drummers in marching band and singers in choir together, and asked him to join Excalibur. That summer he attended Musicians Institute in Hollywood, California for the summer course, and again at the age of 18, for the full course. While in Hollywood the second time, he started running audio for the all-female trio called Andromeda. Following his time in Hollywood, he moved back to South Texas where he reconnected with Excalibur, which later became Dirty Haven. After Dirty Haven he left to join a band in Ohio called Krauss in the late 80's, who toured all throughout the Midwest and the Eastern and Southern States. After Krauss he stayed in Ohio and joined a local band called One Night Stand playing around the area. Eventually, he moved back to St. Charles, Illinois and joined a band from Aurora called Blacklist. He later found himself back in South Texas where he fell into professional recording and engineering at local studios. He also started doing live audio for one of the biggest sound companies in the area at the time and worked with some of the biggest touring acts in almost every genre of music, all the while playing in cover bands and working on original music. He now lives in Austin,Texas and is doing music full time. Not only the lead guitar player for San Antonio based Metal band Byfist, Ernie B. stays busy as the full time bass player for the San Antonio/Austin based band Eclipse, and playing drums with Austin based Brass band World Gone Mad. He also has a small production company, Ernie B. Productions, providing sound and lighting for live events and recording services, as well as a house gig in Austin running audio for hundreds of bands a year.