Meet the Band

Keyboardist • Sound Engineer • Heart of the Band

“I never thought I’d play in front of anyone. I just… liked the way it felt. Being inside the sound.”

Role: Keyboardist & Sound Engineer. Quiet, precise, autistic, and deeply private. Al joined the band not by ambition but gravity. He is the emotional center.

Born: February 9, 1950 — Jersey City, New Jersey

Height: 5'7"

Weight: 128 lbs

Languages:Polish (first), English, eventually fluent in German

Identities:Autistic (undiagnosed), queer

Faith: Privately devout Catholic

Al Ostrowski is the quietly radiant core of Moonlight Animals — their keyboardist, sound engineer, and emotional compass. Soft-spoken and deeply observant, Al doesn't command attention; he reshapes the air around him. His influence is invisible to most, but unmistakable in the band’s sound: clean, strange, aching with clarity.

Raised above a bakery by his mother Zofia, a Polish war widow, Al grew up wrapped in ritual and silence. Autism shaped his world early — the wrong fabric could make him cry, but the hum of a mixer soothed him instantly. He found comfort in patterns, rhythms, and liturgy; later, in magnetic tape, waveform diagrams, and the control offered by a mixing board.

At 18, Al nearly lost Zofia to a collapse that rewired his world. He buried his panic in routine and work — bakery shifts, reel-to-reel machines, patch cables — until, slowly, music became more than refuge. It became identity. He joined the band not through ambition but through gravity — drawn in, first as a sound engineer, then a member. He never meant to be seen. But they saw him anyway.

Al is autistic, anxious, and emotionally intense beneath his stillness. He masks by default, avoids touch unless he initiates it, and struggles with eye contact and unpredictability. Yet, he’s fiercely loyal, protective, and precise in his care. Love, for him, is not grand gestures — it’s in tuning the monitor mix, the handwritten labels on your tapes, the soup waiting on the stove at 2 a.m.

He has never had a boyfriend before Tom Monaghan. But he’s wanted him — quietly, for years. Their love is slow, hard-won, and real. Tom makes space for Al’s silence; Al gives Tom the trust no one else ever earned. When Tom falls apart, Al stays. When Al unravels, Tom catches him.

He never thought he’d belong anywhere. But someone looked at him once and said: you do. And that changed everything.

Bassist • Emotional Anchor • Quiet Storm

“I’m not the voice. I’m the weight.”

Role: Bassist & emotional cornerstone. Father, builder, bearer of silence. A lapsed Catholic with undiagnosed BPD, Tom grounds the band with quiet strength and deep pain.

Born: June 22, 1946 — Bayonne, New Jersey

Height: 6'1"

Weight: 188 lbs

Identities:Father, queer, emotionally repressed, undiagnosed BPD

Faith: Raised Catholic. Lapsed, but the guilt never left.

Tom Monaghan is the backbone of Moonlight Animals — their bassist, logistics man, and silent protector. He doesn’t seek attention. Doesn’t need the spotlight. His strength is steadiness: the kind that holds a room together even while fraying at the seams.

Raised in a strict Irish Catholic household as the oldest of five, Tom was taught that love meant labor, and emotion was something you locked behind your ribs. He became the family’s second father before he was ten. Grew up quiet, kind, capable — and convinced he wasn’t allowed to want anything for himself.

At 19, he became a dad. Deanna changed his life, fast and irreversibly. He married Margaret out of duty, not romance. When the marriage ended, he kept custody. Not to punish — but to protect. Because he always stays.

By 1971, Tom is 25, exhausted, and holding everything together with his bare hands: a daughter, a half-built house, a fledgling band, and a heart that doesn’t know how to ask for comfort. Bass became his voice. The only place he could feel without falling apart.

Then came Al. Quiet, strange, brilliant Al. Tom knew him years before, but something shifted. A glance. A moment. A kiss. Loving Al is the most terrifying, honest thing Tom has ever done. It cracks him open. He doesn’t know how to name it, but he knows: this is real. This is worth fighting for.

Tom is quiet, but not calm. He’s gentle, but dangerous when cornered. His love is not loud — it’s in the hammer he swings by day, the soup he reheats at midnight, the hand he offers without asking. He is not perfect. But he stays.

He is the weight that makes the music real.

Rhythm Guitarist • Instigator • Pulse of the Band

“The teacher read it like ‘Ray-FELL-oh,’ and I was too tired to correct her. So now I’m Ray, and no one calls me by my real name unless I’m in trouble or kissing someone.”

Role: Rhythm Guitarist & Chaos Engine. ADHD/anxiety-coded, emotionally generous and emotionally reckless.

Born: August 1, 1947 — Bayonne, New Jersey

Height: 5'10" (but acts like he’s 6’4)

Weight: 158 lbs

Identities:Anxiety-coded, Italian-American, emotionally generous & chronically loud

Faith: Catholic by default. Still crosses himself before takeoff and every show.

Ray Caruso is the beating heart of Moonlight Animals — rhythm guitarist, crowd-mover, and human lightning bolt. He’s loud in every sense: laugh, voice, presence, loyalty. The guy who jumps into the crowd mid-song, who leaves chaos in every greenroom, who hugs too hard and punches too fast.

He grew up in a noisy Italian-American household where dinner was a battlefield and love meant yelling. He never stood a chance at being quiet. He doesn’t sit still. Doesn’t do “moderate.” But under the bravado is a sensitive core — someone who reads people better than himself, someone who flinches at real sincerity but would bleed for his friends without thinking twice.

Ray bonded with Tom in middle school and never looked back. He co-founded the band in high school with Tom and Dave, played rhythm because he wanted punch, and wrote lyrics on the back of detentions. His mic is always too hot. His laugh fills the van. He’s the band’s chaos engine and emotional emergency brake all at once.

With Al, he found his opposite — calm, strange, silent — and then made it his mission to crack that shell. He did. Now they volley sarcasm like a sport and somehow understand each other more than anyone expects.

Ray’s the guy you want in your corner. He’ll fight for you before he knows why. He’s a disaster romantically, emotionally impulsive, too loyal, and terrible at apologies — but he shows up. Always.

He doesn’t lead with tenderness. But it’s there. In the groove of his playing. In the jokes. In the way he checks if you’ve eaten.

Because for Ray, rhythm is love. He plays like someone who never wants the beat — or his people — to fall apart.

Lead Guitarist • Moral Compass • Quiet Flame

“He doesn’t say much. But when he does, you shut the hell up and listen.”

Role: Lead Guitarist. The quiet tide that holds the band steady. He plays with weight. He speaks with precision. He sees everything.

Born: November 7, 1948 — Bayonne, New Jersey

Height: 6'0"

Weight: 172 lbs

Identities:Irish-American, emotionally fluent but repressed, complex PTSD survivor

Faith: Culturally Catholic. Still lights candles, still feels the weight.

Dave Callahan is the quiet edge of Moonlight Animals — lead guitarist, oldest soul in the room, and the person you want near when the world starts cracking. He doesn’t solo for attention. He plays like he means it. Like it’s the only honest thing left.

Raised in a violent, emotionally barren household, Dave learned early to survive in silence. His father’s fists taught him to flinch inward. His mother’s silence taught him to carry hurt like it was his fault. He stopped speaking up at ten, but never stopped noticing.

Music gave him voice. Guitar became his translation system — all bend and restraint, tension and grace. He joined the band young, a childhood friend of Tom and Ray, and found a space where he could finally breathe. He never wanted to lead, but when he speaks, the band listens. Always.

Dave doesn’t shout. He doesn’t flinch. He watches, measures, remembers. He’s the guy who brings coffee without asking, who fixes your amp before you realize it’s buzzing. He’s always reading — Baldwin in his bag, Motown in his headphones, political fury in his quiet gaze.

He’s never been flashy. But every note he plays lands like a confession.

He loves his people without needing to say it.

He stays. He sees. He speaks when it matters.

Drummer • Wildcard • Rhythm-Souled Sci-Fi Devotee

“Never underestimate the guy doing cartwheels in the parking lot. He’s listening.”

Role: Drummer. Wildcard. Genius chaos muppet. ADHD-coded heart with a math brain and a rhythm soul.

Born: April 10, 1953 — Hartford, Connecticut

Height: 5'9"

Weight: 145 lbs

Identities:ADHD (undiagnosed), rhythm savant, emotionally chaotic good

Faith: Protestant in name only. Found more religion in time signatures than in pews.

Martin Whittenmore is the unexpected glue of Moonlight Animals — their drummer, kinetic soul, and the youngest member by far. A runaway with bruised elbows and a sci-fi paperback in his back pocket, Martin didn't just play his way into the band — he bent time until they couldn’t imagine it without him.

Raised in a cold, upper-middle-class WASP home where silence reigned and emotion was shameful, Martin learned early to survive through motion. He ran. He joked. He played. He vanished into books about other planets and rhythms that finally made sense.

By 18, he was crashing on couches, drumming on countertops, and living off charm and chaos. Dave found him — elbow-deep in busboy shifts and syncopated fork solos — and gave him a shot. The rest is loud, weird, and perfect history.

Martin doesn’t sit still. Doesn’t shut up. Doesn’t hide his heart. He plays like a storm with a map, makes jokes that derail interviews, and sometimes solves math problems mid-soundcheck. He’s chaos incarnate — but he cares so deeply, it hurts.

His ADHD makes him scatterbrained but brilliant. He can’t name his feelings, but he plays them. Anger in 5/4. Joy in 6/8. Grief as a slow cymbal swell that lingers in your chest.

Martin is the little brother of the band — the one who eats Al’s lunch, wrestles Ray over nothing, leaves socks in Dave’s shoes, and somehow makes Tom smile when he’s been silent for hours.

He’s the rhythm when the world falls out of sync.

The pulse that reminds them all: they’re still alive.