About the host

Well since I can't afford a publicist, I will have to write my own bio, so I apologize in advance if it doesn't seem very professional. I have an absolutely terrible memory, but I'm happy to recount what I can...

When I was a little boy, my mother died. Don't feel bad for me, I can't remember anything about her. When I was five, my father remarried a woman who had also lost her husband. Overnight I suddenly had three sisters and a new mother, the youngest sister had the cutest curls. The boys and girls didn't get along very well, except for my oldest brother Greg and my Step-sister Marcia. Those two got along a little too well, but this story isn't about them.

I think my music career first started the summer of my parent's fifth wedding anniversary. We kids had all chipped in and bought mom and dad this really nice silver platter and we sent my screw up of a sister, Jan, to get it engraved. Well, she didn't ask how much it would cost and proceeded to have a novel inscribed on the back. When she went to pick it up, the clerk said it would cost $500 for all of the letters she had chosen. When she told us, we all thought we were going to kill her, but fortunately, Greg had a great idea to win a Saturday morning talent contest. So we formed a band (cleverly we called ourselves "The Silver Platters", I guess you could say that was my first band) and we sang our first hit single, "Sunshine Day". We won that contest and all I could taste on my tongue was fame and I had to satiate my craving. When the rest of my family told me they only wanted to do it for that one event, I made a life altering decision to leave home at ten years old and pursue my destiny.

There were some kids in my school that I had befriended. They had a weird family situation as well, so we got along fantastically. The oldest brother, David was the cutest thing I had ever seen and was easily one of the earliest indications that I was gay. It also helped that he paid attention to me when I visited since he didn't have eyes for his sister Laurie, like Greg had for Marcia. I knew they would be the family for me because at the end of that school year, their mother Shirley met a man named Ruben, sold off their house and bought a bus, painted it crazy colors and decided to hit the road as a musical touring family. We had some wild times on that tour. Laurie could do really cool things like pick up radio stations on her braces and one time, our bus got skunked, which may have lead to my love of tomatoes after I realized during that experience, they were a miracle creation. With as much fun as we had and for all I learned, sadly it wasn't all good. While David was teaching me to play guitar and sing, Danny, the red headed drummer, was teaching me early about drinking. I had my first martini on my eleventh birthday somewhere outside Detroit. Fortunately, my crush had me hanging out with David much more, because Danny ended up with a major drug problem (where else could it go but down?) and there is no telling whether or not I would have slid down that slippery slope with him. I am happy to say that his story does have a happy ending however, as he is now a radio personality in Los Angeles and somewhat sober.

I digress, so we toured for six years and I finally decided I had had enough bus living. So during a tour through the east, I had them drop me at a resort in the Catskills that was hiring a guitar player and dancers.

My choreography with the Silver Platters was so minimal, but I knew that if they didn't hire me as a guitarist, I would definitely embellish my time as a dancer. Luckily for me, they hired me as a guitarist and a hunky dancer named Johnny Castle as the lead dancer. Every weekend we performed a sixties review of salsa, mambo and meringue music. The rich men would come up and play cards all weekend while their rich wives tried to seduce the hunky hired help. It was the summer of my sixteenth birthday that I first fell in love with a man and never looked back. We were performing the final dance of the summer and I was sitting in the corner of the stage playing my guitar. Johnny and I had made eyes at each other all summer, but I thought he was just frustrated that I was always staring at him. Turns out we were both just shy. So we were getting ready to perform the boring Kellerman Anthem, some adult contemporary song from one of the guys in the Righteous Brothers and Johnny and Francis were supposed to do the big finale dance. Suddenly Johnny grabbed the microphone and made an announcement saying, "I know that every season we end with the meringue, but this year, we are gonna do it my way. Sorry Francis." Then he walked over to the corner of the stage where I was sitting and grabbed me by the hand and announced, "nobody puts Baub in the corner".

I stood up, he pulled me close to him and planted one of the hottest kisses I had ever known in front of all of those rich phonies. The band didn't know how to react, so they just started playing the song and I must have learned more than I knew from all of the rehearsals, because I knew all of Francis' dance moves. Johnny and I had the time of our lives that night. Before Kellerman could catch up with us after we took our bow, we ran out the door and Johnny threw me on the back of his motorcycle. He and I rode to the only place we could think of, New York City.

The New York years, as I refer to them, were some of the hardest years and yet the most passionate and amazing years. We were so poor. It turned out he had run away from home years earlier as well, so he didn't have any support from his family either. We had so much in common which is why we worked so well together. We slept on some of the coldest floors, but as long as we were together, we were always warm. There was this eccentric artist that let us stay on his floor for about two months. We learned so much from him and I know that it was him that I owe the most gratitude towards. I never thought much of his art (he kept insisting that painting soup cans would one day be popular, I kept telling him he should try something more original, but what did I know? I was a musician.).

So every night was like an orgy around that place. You never knew who would be sleeping on the floor with you and worse, how many clothes they would or wouldn't be wearing. So one night, after everyone had gone to sleep, I heard a whimpering cry in the corner. So I went over and found the sweetest girl huddled into a ball and sobbing. She had just moved to New York and was scared out of her mind. The boy she thought she was going to be able to spend the rest of her life with had just dumped her.

So I sat her upright and wiped the tears from her cheek and said, "c'mon girl, do you believe in love? Don't go for second best, put your love to the test. Express yourself! Don't let that man push you over the borderline. Thank your lucky star that you have everybody here. Let's pretend we are on holiday and with enough determination, you will be able to rule the world!"

Well that little blubbering girl took my words to heart, because before I knew it, her music had become the hottest ticket in town. And the exact day I was picking up the phone to call my bunch back home to see if they would have me back (Johnny and I weren't getting along very well, Andy, the eccentric artist had been shot, and floor hopping was just getting old) when Madonna, the crying girl in the corner, called me and asked me to play guitar on her Virgin Tour. I said, "yes" immediately, kissed Johnny goodbye and hit the road. Every city we went, Madonna got bigger and bigger. It was so nice to stay in hotels and eat real food, but I wanted that marquee to read "Baub Merrick", not Madonna. So at the end of the tour, I kissed Madonna on the cheek and told her to call me for the next one (that was musician lingo for, "if I'm available, I will totally tour with you again, but in the meantime I am going to be a star on my own). I had to pursue my dreams.

I played guitar in several bands after that summer, some of them hits, some of them not. Actually, a lot of them were not. That was how I ended up in Mexico. I was addicted to the drink and I had lost my way in Mexico. That is until a hot summer day when I woke up from a night of drinking in the same bed as my now band mate Willow. She was on a Peyote binge and I had spent the night making love to a bottle of tequila. Neither of us knew how we got there, or what we did, but I have been with her ever since. It was a day that changed me forever. I immediately flew back to the states with her and we joined Spy Girl Run shortly thereafter. I have never been with a band that felt more like a family (which is ironic considering my first two bands were nothing but family) than I had ever known. This is the band I plan to retire with. This is the band I can rock with. And that is my story and I am sticking to it!