BIO TLDR
“Second Act Artist”
Diopter is the second-act project of a former healthcare entrepreneur who returned to music after selling his practice in 2021. Blending alternative rock and roots-driven songwriting, he records from a self-built home studio and collaborates internationally for refined production. His work centers on legacy, resilience, and emotional clarity — driven by a desire to leave a recorded imprint for the next generation.
BIO
I didn’t plan a second act in music. I planned a career in healthcare.
I first picked up a guitar in 1990 and played acoustic gigs around Charlotte in the early ’90s. Then came optometry school, building a private practice in Charleston, raising a son, and spending nearly two decades as a business owner. Music slowly moved into the background behind responsibility.
In 2021, I sold my practice. What I expected to feel like relief became something more complicated — corporate structure, loss of autonomy, health struggles, and the realization that I had drifted too far from something essential.
My wife, Ellen, changed that.
One day she took me to a small guitar shop in North Charleston and told me to pick the guitar I had always wanted. I chose a 2002 Gibson Les Paul in tobacco sunburst. That guitar didn’t just restart a hobby — it reopened a discipline I had buried years earlier.
I started waking up at 3 a.m. again, the same hour I once used to run financial reports and business numbers. Only now I played guitar every morning instead.
In 2022, a large Italian family reunion in Rhode Island inspired my first original song, “Bound.” Surrounded by generations of immigrants and family history, I began thinking about lineage and what remains after people are gone. My grandfather had once been a tenor at the Metropolitan Opera, yet none of us grandchildren had ever heard his voice. No recordings survived.
That became my reason for recording music.
I began teaching myself production in Ableton, building a home vocal booth, and obsessing over arrangement, guitar tone, and recording techniques. My background in mechanical engineering made the technical side of music deeply addictive. The early recordings were raw and imperfect, but they were honest.
The debut album Dream State captured that period of rediscovery — emotional processing, post-pandemic reflection, and experimentation. Since then, the project has evolved into a more refined collaboration with UK engineer Danny McLauchlan (TOLS), incorporating live drums, layered guitars, and increasingly expansive production.
Under the name Diopter, I write somewhere between alternative rock, roots-driven storytelling, and melodic guitar rock. Songs usually begin with chord progressions first. The guitar establishes the emotional direction, and the lyrics follow from there.
I’m not trying to manufacture an image or chase trends. I’m trying to create songs that feel real, continue to improve, and leave behind something lasting for the next generation.
QUOTES
On returning to music:
“I didn’t come back to music to chase algorithms. I came back to leave something behind that matters.”
On legacy:
“My grandfather sang at the Met, but none of us ever heard him. That’s why I record. I want my son to remember what my voice sounded like.”
On songwriting:
“For me, a song starts with a chord progression. The chords set the feeling, and the feeling demands the truth. Lyrics come last — when I’m ready to admit what I’m feeling.”
On discipline:
“I’ve run a business, I’ve raised a son, and I’ve learned one thing: music is a discipline. You get up, you play, you get better. That’s the job.”
