Haha, wow, I got mentioned in a thread before even posting.
Yeah, my parents bought me a guitar when I was 14 because I was bored in school and they thought I needed an outlet or something. It was an acoustic Ibanez, still got it in the basement. I'm in a band now. 5 guys ranging from 28 to 52 and from mailman to cameraman. I play everything, basically. Rhythm guitar and backing vocals more than half the time, quite a bit of bass, lead guitar and lead vocals on a few songs, and as of recently, drums on Seeger's Turn the Page. We're basically a straightforward classic rock cover band. We play pubs, mostly, and obviously on the weekend. It's not bad, play about 3 hours every night with breaks, get about 80-100 Canadian per person.
This is from a recent gig playing for a motorcycle club. Thankfully, the video's too blurry to make out their logo right under me. They frown upon any pictures or video being taken at their events. I'm the guy in burgundy who's barely moving while playing/singing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JrIAdJN0Ao
I also write and record some of my own stuff that isn't quite the same genre as the stuff above. I don't really have any recent recordings up, but here's a video from a wedding of a close friend some 6-7 years ago. I wrote this and played it with the best man backing me up on sax before the ceremony or something like that. He hadn't seen his sax part until about 5 minutes before this when I gave him the sheet music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Asr5GlsJH4w
Oh, and for gear heads.
My main guitar is a basic Les Paul Epiphone Standard. The one in the second video is a rare Epiphone Chet Atkins acoustic-electric. It's unusual because it has nylon strings. My bass is a Squire J. Drums are an electric kit from Costco, no idea what brand. I got a couple of small Marshall amps, one bass and one guitar. 15 and 20 watts. I find that I don't really need a bigger amp for performing, as we usually bring a mixer and mikes with us and just mike all the amps and connect them to the house PA. I don't really like the idea of playing with just amp power. It only works for super small places. Also, our drummer is so effin loud, he drowns out even serious amps, so miking stuff works better.
I'm also not a huge fan of effects. The gain/chorus/delay on an amp is good enough for me.