About Us

Don Karg

Don Karg started playing music at the age of six and was on stage soon thereafter. He plays guitar, bass, and keyboard. Don is a songwriter and has been a recording artist since 1996. He writes and plays in styles similar to Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, the Stones, Lynrd Skynrd, and Robin Trower.
Don has a degree in business administration with a minor in music. He received a patent for the first Interlocking Stackable Guitar in 19XX, an innovative invention allowing multiple guitars to be playable at the same time.
He is also a seven-time congressional candidate, an author, salesman, purchasing agent, machinist, and quality control inspector.
Don has written and recorded hundreds, if not thousands of songs. Most recordings are quality demos. Some are finally benefitting from professional recording, producing, mixing, and mastering. He has been in hundreds of bands, many of which recorded albums of varying production quality.
He has also conducted numerous investigations on corporate and governmental fraud and malfeasance, including the Cox report, The ’16 Gold King Mine disaster, and the VA scandal.
For the last six years, he has been researching and writing books about the on-going VA crisis and the numerous, overwhelming failures and felonies at 150 VA hospitals around the country on behalf of our veterans. Don delivered thirty-two of his VA Books [32,000 pages] to President-elect Donald Trump. Don has single-handedly done the research, graphics, and layout for 50,000 pages in 50 books on the VA scandal.

Bill Thoma

Bill Thoma was born in Oxnard, CA.  From an early age, he showed an interest in music, particularly drums.  His started performing at age twelve when he played snare drum in concert band.  The next year he performed with marching band, concert band, and choir.  In the next two years, he focused on performing in choir and an a cappela madrigal group.  
While attending Santa Barbara High school, he purchased his first drum set and started taking lessons.  Bill played in several different bands and performed at parties and High school events.  In 1985 Bill played in an Avant-garde punk band called Social Upheaval. However, he wanted to learn still more about music and expand his horizons by playing with other musicians.  
So, in 1988 Bill moved to Marin County, CA and enrolled at the College of Marin to study music.  He studied classical composers, theory, composition, and piano.  Bill joined the Marin Community Orchestra and played the timpani alongside his music instructors.  While completing the music program in 1992, Bill played all around the San Francisco Bay area with numerous bands.  [Session work for studios?]
In 1995. Bill joined the band Crazy from the Heat, a Grateful Dead/Jerry Garcia type sound.  The band played both originals and covers and received accolades from Relix Magazine.  Bill finished this project in July 2000 when he played at the Oregon Country Fair in Eugene, OR.  
After moving to Phoenix, AZ Bill further honed his talents by filling in with many local acts including Big Mama & White Bread, Funk Frequency, and now Burning Palms.  
Some of Bill’s musical influences include, but are not limited to, Rush, Yes, Rick Wakeman, Genesis, Pat Travers, Frank Zappa, Billy Cobham, Miles Davis, Pink Floyd, Grateful Dead, Mickey Hart’s Planet Drum, Earnest Ranglin, Jimi Hendrix, and many more.
Bill resides with his wife and cats in Peoria, AZ and enjoys cooking as well as music. 

… (and the occasional beer) 🙂

ELLIOTT REED

Elliott Reed is a Phoenix songwriter, guitar and bass player.  He has written hundreds of songs and been in numerous bands for decades.  He is also an  Arizona licensed Architect, real estate investor, and business owner.
 
Elliott attended Arizona State University College of Architecture for a year.  At the same time that he pursued his architectural education, Elliot took music classes.  Music captured his interest more than architectural school, so he pursued music to the 1969 SoCal scene.  

Elliott was not satisfied with academia’s understanding or instruction on music theory.  So, in the fall of 1971 Elliott developed his “Reed Master Scale Music Theory.”  He eventually copyrighted it in 2003-2005.   That music theory states in a few paragraphs how music flows and “fits together.”
 
Elliott went back to school in Tempe, but his love of music took precedence over his architectural education and Elliott left school again and went east.  Upon returning to Phoenix in 1973, Elliott began work as a draftsman while continuing the music career.  The late 1970’s-1980’s Commercial Real Estate boom enabled Elliott to use his natural talent for art, drawing, and building design.  Elliott passed his Arizona Architect License examination in 1984 on the first attempt.
 
Between 1970 and 1977 Elliott played in several bands and ensembles, including a singer/guitar duo and a five piece hard rock band alternately called Threshold or Rage.
 
In 1977, opportunities in architecture opened up.  As the music scene was turning to Glam Rock, Elliott paused his music career for eighteen years.  He focused on profitable projects in association with other architects.  He did so well that he started his own independent architectural firm in 1986.
 
The Commercial Real Estate sector crashed in 1988, so Elliott shifted his focus to residential projects.  In 1991, Elliott founded a Computer Aided Design Company, Cadapplications Inc, an Arizona Corporation.  Elliott continues to use computers for architectural purposes as well as audio, video, and writing.
 
In 2000, Elliott began playing music again with local musicians, both originals and covers.  Computers made it possible to compose and play multi-layered musical compositions.  Elliott has written and recorded hundreds of songs, many of which are online at Youtube/elliott439.
 
Work in architecture continued regularly until 2010.  In 2011, Elliott met Donald Kehl, owner and producer at Alpha Recording in Tempe, Arizona at a trade show.  Elliott gave him a CD.  After listening to it in-depth, he thought that Elliott might be well-suited for collaborating with Don Karg, a friend and artist who he had been producing for years.  He introduced Elliott to Don Karg.  Don Karg was a guitar player and songwriter looking for adventure playing originals and Blues/ Hard Rock covers including Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Stones, Lynrd Skynrd, and Robin Trower.
 
Don Karg had also written hundreds, maybe thousands of songs, so there was a natural fit. Thus the foundation was put in place for the Burning Palms Power Trio with drummer Billy Thoma.  Elliott has also played for several iterations of the Karg Reed Band and theArizona band Sun since 2011.  Both bands are also on Youtube, with much more to come.