Born in Houston, Texas, and raised on a healthy diet of rhythm and blues where he later on hooked up with such blues luminaries as Lightnin’ Hopkins, Charles Brown, BB King, Otis Rush, Etta James, Buddy Guy, and Jimmie Reed, Tony left the area in 1971 and followed his musical calling to New York and eventually to London.

In London, he was a founding member of the rock band “Crawler” with Paul Kossof, and played on many records during his 5 years in the U.K.

1979 brought about a major change in Tony’s life when he moved to Los Angeles.

In 1981, he joined forces with Eric Burdon, 1982 Rickie Lee Jones, and 1983 Bette Midler.

In 1984 he took the drum chair in Bonnie Raitt’s band on the road and during her huge breakout album, “Nick of Time,” and the subsequent “Luck of the Draw.”
In 1991 he decided to stay off the road and concentrate more on studio work, but in 1993 he played on a Taj Mahal record called “Dancin’ the Blues,” which was nominated for a Grammy, and developed a relationship with Taj that put him in Taj’s road band, called The Phantom Blues, for seven years.

After three studio records, all nominated for a Grammy with one win out of the three, “Senor Blues,” Tony produced a live record with Taj Mahal called “Shoutin’ in Key,” which won a Grammy in 2000. The band was The Phantom Blues Band, the core of which played on all four Taj records.

In 2008, Taj’s new record called “Maestro,” was also nominated for a Grammy, and The Phantom Blues Band co-produced four tracks with Taj for this record.

Tony has produced two CD’s on Eric Burdon’s “My Secret Life,” and “Soul of a Man.” He also found himself filling that live drum chair for most of 2007 and 2008.

Tony has co-produced a CD for Curtis Salgado that received four nominations for a Blues Music Award in 2009.

He has been a member of the cast in a recurring role for Jim Belushi’s sitcom, “According to Jim,” and has been playing live with Jim in a band called The Sacred Hearts for 13 years as the house band for The House of Blues, and as recently as eight years ago played with Jim and Dan Aykroyd as The Blues Brothers mostly in the corporate world, and opening all new venues for The House of Blues.

2009 looks like a good year, as Tony has taken the drum chair for The Robert Cray Band, with a new CD projected for this year and extensive road work.

More About the Gear:

I play drum workshop drums. My first road kit is custom made for me, and the Lacquer finish is a custom midnight purple with silver flecks in the paint. The shells are called the jazz series and they are a combination of maple and gum. That gives them a slight vintage sound, except that they are clearly a DW drum set in every way from the manufacturing quality to the warm, round, and crisp sound.

I exclusively use SABIAN cymbals and most of the setup for this kit are prototypes. SABIAN is always coming up with something new and ahead of the game. They are producing some suspended orchestral crashes and rides and I’m getting to try them out with this kit and I’m very happy, WOW!

The China cymbals are inverted and stacked on top of each other.

I use only REMO drum heads and on the toms it’s clear Ambassadors top and bottom, a coated P3 on the bass drum batter side and a CS Ambassador on the snare.

I use ViC FiRTH drumsticks, mallets and brushes exclusively, I use 55A’S and they are weighted to come close to 110 grams per stick, with my signature on each stick.

My second road kit is an older DW set with maple shells and the snare drum is a custom ten ply shell with my personal specs.