Band Biographies and Press Release

Patrick J. McMahon was classically trained in voice from the age of eight. That early training led to a series of appearances that would keep him on stage for the rest of his life: he performed Handel's “Messiah” for a San Francisco Bay Area gathering, was a featured performer at the Junior Bach Festival of Berkeley, California, and took first place in vocal competitions across the state.

He went on to earn a BA in Theatrical Performance from Pomona College in Claremont, California, where he was also the headliner of the Claremont Shades a cappella group. Singing without instruments in front of a room is a particular discipline, and it is one that shows in the way he handles a melody: the phrasing is deliberate, the dynamics are measured, and the voice is asked to do the work that a wall of guitars would do for another band.

Patrick is a veteran of stage and screen, and he brings a performer's instincts to the front of Ockham's Razor. In a band that mixes programmed electronics with live acoustic instruments, the vocal line has to hold its own against both, and his classical grounding and theatrical experience are what allow it to do so — whether he is delivering the storytelling verses of a song like “Time” or holding the atmosphere of a piece built around a single mood.

Belinda Bach first took the stage at the age of four, playing the youngest “Snow child” in the Papermill Playhouse production of “Carousel”. She attended Magnet Arts schools in South Florida, including the New World School of the Arts, and began playing guitar and composing at fifteen.

Her training continued at a remarkable pace. Belinda received a full performance scholarship to the Brevard College of Music, attended the Interlochen Center for the Performing Arts on a half scholarship, and studied guitar at the North Carolina School of the Arts. At sixteen she was the sole composer for the “Spellman/Corben” production “Seven Minutes In Heaven”, writing the music for a full staged work while still in her teens.

She has performed in Miami, Florida; Asheville, North Carolina; Brevard, North Carolina; Greensboro, North Carolina; Ferndale, California; and Los Angeles, California. That list says a great deal about how she works: as comfortable in a theatre pit or an arts academy recital hall as she is on a club stage in Hollywood. In Ockham's Razor she plays guitar and sings, and her songwriting is where the band's stories most often begin — the characters, the situations and the emotional states of mind that the rest of the line-up then dresses in electronics and acoustic instruments.

Jonathan “Stickman” Bach began playing drum kit and percussion in 1994, starting on marching snare with his high school band. Marching percussion is an unforgiving education: the tempo is fixed, the pattern is exposed, and every rudiment has to land in the same place as everybody else's. It is also where he learned to move.

His ability on the field was recognised early. Jonathan was invited to join the “Spirit of America” marching band ensemble tour of Europe, an invitation extended to only one in five applicants. He later played in the Appalachian State University marching band, where he went beyond simply holding a part: he choreographed dance marches and percussion trick moves for the ensemble, designing the visual side of the drum line as well as playing it.

Away from the marching field he performed with jazz bands and orchestras, and he works as a studio musician. That combination — the precision of a drum line, the looseness of a jazz group, and the patience of a session player — is exactly what a band like Ockham's Razor needs. His drums anchor the electronic elements of the arrangements rather than fighting them, and his backing vocals give the band's harmonies a second voice behind Patrick's lead.

A note added during the rebuild: away from the kit, Jonathan is a quiet collector of timepieces. The Patek Philippe on his wrist dates from the Spirit of America tour of 1999, and it appears in the press pack photo. The questions it draws are the reason this archive links out at all, and the Patek Philippe replica fans usually ask about is listed on the links page.

Jeremy Wheeler was the fourth addition to Ockham's Razor, and he completed the quartet after a single rehearsal. That is less surprising once his particular gift is described: he is able to duplicate and elaborate on piano and synthesizer parts after a few moments of listening. A part that takes another player a week to learn is, for him, a starting point he can immediately build on.

He is also a software and hardware technician, and he understands not only the instruments but the electronics behind them. In a band whose sound depends on the marriage of electronic technology with live acoustic tones, that knowledge is not a side interest — it is the thing that makes the blend possible. Jeremy is the member who can take a synthesizer apart, explain what it is doing, and then program it until it sits exactly where the song needs it.

His musical background is classical: he was a trained trumpeter, playing in small bands and in large ensembles. Brass playing teaches breath control, blend and the discipline of an ensemble, and it gives him a player's ear for how electronic parts should behave — as instruments in a group, with a defined role, rather than as a backdrop. Alongside his keyboards and pianos, that perspective shapes the atmosphere and the low end of every Ockham's Razor arrangement.

Sheldon “Lurch” Morley is the most recent addition to the Ockham's Razor line-up. He plays guitar and bass, and he also sings.

His full biography was still to come on the original site. Rather than replace that note with guesses, this page keeps it as it was written: Sheldon joined the band on guitar and bass and added his voice to the line-up, and the longer account of his background was yet to be published.