Eight in the morning - time for the morning staple: Starbucks coffee. And that is where any semblance of normality ends. As Blake Neely is not heading off to an ordinary job; work for him is following his passion: making music. It is a job he could only have dreamed of and, at 34, it is a job many years in the making. It took him across the country and around the world and eventually led him to a small town in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado….Everwood.

Born and raised in Texas, Blake Neely spent the bulk of his life there before making the inevitable move to Los Angeles. For Neely, pursuing music was never a conscious choice - it was simply what he did - who he was. He took to playing the piano almost as soon as he learned to walk, and he hasn't looked back since. He seized every opportunity, big or small, to get his hands on the world of music. Years of practicing, training and persistence were beginning to pay off when Blake landed a summer internship with Disney while attending the University of Texas. After college, he returned to work for Disney, eventually making his way "up the ladder" to manage their print music department. Thankful for all the invaluable experience and contacts he gained, but still restless for more, Neely struck out on his own. It would be, as it always is in Hollywood, those contacts that helped to take his career to the next level.

Neely set out as many would be musicians do, working on his own music while trying to find a steady source of employment. He wrote numerous books on how to play various instruments, including "Piano For Dummies." Eventually Neely's reputation spread and he was able to take on some big name projects, including Frequency, Band of Brothers, and High Crimes.

Three degrees of Kevin Bacon later… Greg Berlanti and Mickey Liddell were in need of a composer for their new show and a friend of a friend was able to set Blake up with a rough cut of the pilot episode. Neely sent in his scoring proposal for the pilot and met with Berlanti and Liddell a week a later…The end result: a critically acclaimed primetime drama with an Emmy nominated theme song.

Neely's magic extends far beyond the quirky town of Everwood as his film résumé continues to grow at an astounding rate, with this year's credits including work for the summer blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean. The word "busy" is an understatement. He tacked on work in four other films for 2003 including the conducting and arranging of the score for the recently completed movie The Last Samurai. Despite his work on these and other larger projects, such as Mythodea, Blake Neely still considers Everwood his biggest and most exciting project each week and hopes to keep it that way for many years to come. Don't we all.