My dad was an opera singer when he was a kid and later turned into a huge folk music fan. He taught himself to play guitar and would sing all the time to my sister and me when we were little. My parents thought music was extremely important, so we had to pick an instrument by age 10 and take lessons for at least a year. My older sister was already taking guitar lessons, so I had to pick something completely different. I got dragged to a party with my parents when I was about nine. Like many of these parties, I was the only kid there. The host, Mel, could see I was bored out of my mind, and took pity on me. He came over and said, “Do you want to see something really cool?” I followed him up to the attic and as I turned the corner at the top of the stairs, I saw him pull a sheet off of this beautiful, old, glittery white Slingerland drumset. I couldn’t breathe and time seemed to hold still. Right then, I knew I was going to play the drums.

After a couple of years I started to take playing pretty seriously, and ended up majoring in music at USC. At my senior recital, Mel came up to me and reintroduced himself. We talked a little about drums; unfortunately, I never saw him again. A few months after I graduated, I got a phone call telling me that Mel had died and he had left me the Slinglerland kit in his will. So everything had come full circle, and I started playing on the kit that made me fall in love with the instrument in the first place.

That’s the beginning of the story of singer/songwriter Alex Kimmell, a.k.a. twodoggarage — and only the beginning. You’ve likely never heard of Alex, or listened to his music; in practical terms, he’s just another guy with a day job and a dream, one without the bucks or the luck to push his way through the crowd and into your stereo. Scratch beneath the surface, though, and you’ll find some uncommonly beautiful songs, delivered with a graceful hand and an open heart — the kind of songs you can tell have intensely personal meaning, expressed with the kind of universal sentiment that draws you back to them again and again. Songs like my personal favorite, “Everything Happens to Me” (download), from 2008’s Pinboy. This song has come up on my iPod dozens of times since I first heard it, but there’s something about it that strikes a deep chord in me. Every time I hear Kimmell’s clear, plaintive voice, the gently surging melody, and the way he sings the refrain… (more…)