My most significant early musical memories were in high school with my friend Mark Van Horn. His parents were not rich, but his dad nonetheless somehow funded a makeshift eight-track recording studio in the janitor’s room at the apartment complex he managed. Mark and I spent virtually all our time there when I wasn’t playing soccer. We wrote and recorded entire albums together in our teens, learning both the artistic and technical craft of songwriting and recording.We went deep.So Mark introduced me to the recording studio and my future wife, then he died in his twenties of a brain tumor — just like my brother. Crazy. Mark and my brother inspired much of my life’s philosophy, really — I sort of do a lot of things in honor of them — and they were two of the funniest and most naturally brilliant guys I’ve ever met. And I was hooked — on both the music and the girl.