Before there was AnAkA there was an idea that rang through my head constantly. That idea fueled and inspired me to get my act together, and start thinking about forming a band. I wanted to shake the world. Since the time I started playing music, I knew what this band was supposed to sound like, and what it should stand for. Ever since I was young, creativity had always been my best friend in life. Music, in a sense, helped me to find a discipline in my life, as well as an ultimate way to express myself.
........In early 1995, I started playing guitar. It became an obsession for me to learn as much as I could about the instrument, and I would practice relentlessly. One night I was practicing and trying to get a grip on my new found past time when my brother Jimmy walked into my room and told me that some guy was at our window yelling "yo who's that playing guitar!" I went to the window wondering who this guy was, and it ended up being Tony Heredia. He was a drummer in a local band, and we got to talking about metal, and our favorite bands. Tony and I discovered that at the time we lived only a few houses away from each other and he invited me to his band practice, which was great because I was a very young guitar player, and it was great to see other, more experienced, musicians play music.
........Toward the end of 1995 was when Karl and I became friends. We attend the same high school before that but we never really knew each other. Karl and I met through a mutual musician friend we both used to hang with. We didn't really get close until Karl started attending the same college I did. By that time, Karl who also knew Tony, had joined Tony's band.
........I, on the other hand, was totally emerced in learning and creating my own style of music. It really didn't matter to me what was going on around me, it was a time of learning how to get the music that I felt within myself out. It wasn't about finding a band at that time for me, it was about looking inward and finding my music's origins. Every time I had tried to find other musicians to play my music with it never really seemed to work out because no one seemed to be willing to make the same sacrifices I was prepared to make for music. For most people, it was all about a look, a badass image, or about chicks. For me, it was about playing what I felt and pushing myself to become a better music writer.
........The years passed and I kept writing and studying different guitarists and different types of music, everything from thrash metal to country music. As I wrote the songs, I could hear a band playing them in my head. As time went on, I realized that I had a knack for writing very heart felt, yet heavy music. I felt it was finally time to get a band together.
........In the mean time, Karl and I would jam together from time to time and he was really the only other musician I had jammed with for a while. I can remember us jamming at first and thinking that our styles were too different and that it would never work. It just sounded too weird to me. Karl and I were around each other a lot because we went to the same college together and our friendship really grew even before the music thing clicked between us. After a while of jamming with him, a really unique style of music began to form between us. We got comfortable with each other's styles of playing, and Karl brought some really melodic bass tones into the music I was writing at the time.
........Karl and Tony eventually left the band they where involved in and Karl joined up with me. We played my songs and even began writing together, which was something that was very difficult for me to do with other people. Things really started to click between us at that time.
.......In 2000, I had started talking to Tony about joining the band. He came down to a few practices and from the very first practice we had together, I knew he was the man for the job. It was as if he was playing the beat for the songs that I heard in my head as I wrote them. Towards the end of 2000, Tony entered AnAkA, a name that Karl found surfing the net. It was a great name because it didn't insight anything. It didn't pigeon hold us into a certain genre of music and that was key because our musical style really doesn't fall under any certain category.
.... .At that point, AnAkA was three guys Pete, Karl, and Tony. Since I wrote all of the lyrics, the responsibility fell on me to deliver them, and at the same time play guitar. It was cool for a while but I really wasn't a singer, and we started talking about getting someone who could sing, and do justice to the music. I wasn't about to just give my lyrics away to just anyone. It had to someone who could respect the songs and understand them and their origins on a more personal level. The only other person that came to mind was my brother Jimmy. Jimmy had a great voice, and a very good understanding of what I was about as a person. Jimmy joined AnAkA in February 2001. In 2006 Kenny Kuehn was added as second guitar player to the AnAkA machine, as AnAkA continues on its wrecking road towards WORLD DOMINATION!