note the kitchen timer.
Brendan Milburn is a songwriter, teacher, music and gear geek, and a mostly-stay-at-home dad.
From 1995-2013, he was a tentpole member of a band called GrooveLily, touring the US, Canada, and the Netherlands, co-writing and recording and producing eight albums and several e.p.’s.
In 2002, he steered the band toward musical theatre, which led to their greatest successes, including the Off-Broadway run of STRIKING 12: THE GROOVELILY HOLIDAY SHOW in 2006, earning a rave review in the New York Times: “This modest show is more artfully crafted and engaging than virtually all the standard-mold musicals coming our way these days.”
He co-wrote a bunch of material for Disney, including TOY STORY: THE MUSICAL (which ran for eight years on the cruise ship Disney Wonder) and songs for four Tinker Bell animated films.
He geeked out hard in the process of developing a live-looping system for Val Vigoda, connecting external midi footswitches to Ableton Live software, and writing complex arrangements to be performed by one singing electric violinist, connecting foot stomps to live visuals and building big orchestral pop symphonies from scratch. He has since done similar super-geeky stuff enabling other female electric violinists to do live looping - now he's the guy who does that thing.
He now teaches 6 days a week at the West Seattle School of Rock, teaching students ages 3 1/2 to 67 how to sing rock music loudly and in tune without hurting themselves, play keyboards, ukelele, guitar, bass, drums, and do music production with Logic, Ableton Live, and other software.
These days, Brendan is working with new collaborators, doing his level best to be a good father to 13-year-old Mose and 2 1/2-year-old Arlen, 7 month old Rory, and most recently, Brendan is Making a Song a Week.
Want more details? Here's my resumé.