1. John grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
2. He has a degree in Cello Performance and Composition from UT Austin and has been a full time musician based there ever since.
3. His father was a physicist and engineer and designed the 1969 Dodge Charger Daytona, the fastest stock car ever produced in Detroit.
4. His mother was one of the first computer programmers trained by Chrysler to work on their giant, tube-driven, punch card machines back in the 1960's (it took up as much space as a football field and had a whopping 8k processing power).
5. He has gone paragliding in the Swiss Alps and hang gliding in Rio de Janeiro