About

Toe Knee is a musician/producer/composer from Los Ange­les, CA who grew up in the rural town of Blair, Nebraska.  After cut­ting his teeth as a free­lance musi­cian around Omaha dur­ing high school, he moved to Kansas City in 1998 and attended the UMKC Con­ser­va­tory of Music.  Kansas City’s eclec­tic music scene intro­duced Toe Knee to a vast array of musi­cal gen­res, includ­ing Brazil­ian, Afro-Cuban, jazz, folk, and exper­i­men­tal music.

This great diver­sity left a lasting-impression on him, and began creep­ing into his com­pos­ing.  While still in Kansas City, Toe Knee began writ­ing music for his “dream band” to be formed in South­ern California.

After grad­u­at­ing with a BM in Per­cus­sion Per­for­mance in 2002, Toe Knee moved to Los Ange­les and cemented the for­ma­tion of Upstart.  Since 2003, he has been the mid­dle school jazz direc­tor at Cross­roads School in Santa Mon­ica and an in-demand drum teacher around West Los Ange­les.  In addi­tion to his work with Upstart, Toe Knee per­forms and records with song­writer Ben Lear. Toe Knee’s self-produced solo record of eclec­tic folk music, “Songs, Sto­ries, Skies,” was released in 2009.