Tim said he didn’t have much interest in music until he started playing it. Because his dad (bassist Joe McNalley) is a musician, he was always around it, went to concerts all the time and was “tripping over upright basses his whole life.”
Tim started playing the electric bass and guitar at the same time when he was twelve. He had a good friend who was doing Band Camp in Encinitas. He was playing guitar and said Tim should play bass. He had never thought about music seriously, and when he went home and told his dad his dad said, “Great! Here’s an electric bass, here’s an amp, here’s a cable, here’s everything you need.” He also started playing guitar that week as well. 

Growing up, Tim heard a lot of classical music from his dad, as well as jazz. His friends were into classic rock like Pink Floyd. He gravitated to classic rock but then moved onto psychedelic and progressive and eventually improvisation. Tim has been mostly self-taught. The first person he took any formal music lessons from was Richard Sellars, a drummer in San Diego. Then after that, he studied sitar with Kartek Seshadri, who was his first serious mentor. Tim has never taken guitar or bass lessons, he learned from his dad and Mark Dresser. 

As a young man Tim volunteered for an event honoring the life of Ravi Shankar so he could get in for free. After the concert he met Kartik Seshadri (professor of Indian classical music at UCSD), who asked him if he wanted to study the sitar. About a week later at a thrift store, Tim saw an old sitar for only $80, so he bought it and dove in. It took years before Tim realized how deep the pool he dove into was, but said, “It was one of the most fruitful musical decisions I ever made.” 

Tim does not claim any favorite genre to play. He participates in lots of different music with people from widely different sides of the musical spectrum. Tim does not believe there are good genres or bad genres, just good music and bad music and he looks forward to being able to play good music with good musicians. 

At Centrum Tim will be supporting Mara Kaye’s vocal classes and performing.