1959 – Present

My Story

I was born in Dover, Delaware, the first of 4 children of Linda and Ron Wikso (the first). After finishing their tour of duty in the Air Force, my parents moved the family back to their native Long Island, New York where I lived from age 3 until adulthood.

I started playing drums at the age of 7 and studied privately with Larry Ramsden while growing up on Long Island. Along with my private studies, I played in several local bands and began playing my first professional gigs around the time I was 12. I also participated in as many of  the school bands, orchestras and choirs as I could in an effort to learn as much as possible about music.

After graduating from East Islip High School, where some of my classmates included now world renowned Contemporary Christian artists Kathy Troccoli and Margaret Becker as well as former NFL football player, Boomer Esiason, I moved on to attend Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts at the ripe old age of 17.

After completing the engagement on the SS Statendam, I returned to New York. It was January and the temperature, when I left Miami was around 85 degrees and sunny. When I landed at JFK International Airport in New York, it was something like zero degrees, with a wind chill factor that made it feel like negative twenty.

I had been offered a chance to play on the SS Rotterdam on a cruise that was going around the world but I decided I’d had enough of the cruise ship thing for a little while, partly because it was a 3 month cruise, out of which only 30 days would be spent at ports (the rest would be at sea), and partly because I was only 22 years old at the time and the demographics of people who could afford to go on a 3 month cruise around the world, skewed much older, so I decided to stick around New York and see what was next.

About a month later, I decided to take a trip out to Los Angeles to visit some friends I’d met on the cruise and see what LA’s music scene was like. It was February of 1982, the weather was gorgeous and I made the decision to move out there and give it a shot. My entire reasoning was that I could be a starving musician there too, but at least I wouldn’t need a coat!

So, I went back to New York for a few months, worked as much as I could so I could save some money, and then at the end of April, I loaded up my car with everything I owned (I even stuffed clothes inside my drums to save room!), and moved out to Los Angeles.

Initially, I got a job in a clothing store, then got a job at Guitar Center that lasted about 3 weeks, and tried all the while to meet as many musicians as I could, and try to get some work playing wherever and whenever I could.