Born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and raised in the isolated mountain town of Bailey, Colorado, Porter began playing music at a young age, often acting as a sit-in drummer for his father's biker bar band.
[1] As a teenager Porter began to write his own songs, recording and distributing hundreds of homemade cassettes of wildly varying disposition and sound quality, both on his own and as a member of the hardcore art-punk band Neglected Lawn.
Porter's records began to appear internationally after he signed to Camera Obscura, an Australian indie label who released his first proper full-length CD: Reverb Saved My Life (2002) as well as the disc Reconsidered (2001) by shoegazer band Phineas Gage, of which he was a short-term member.
In 2006 Porter signed with Greyday Records, an indie label in Portland Oregon, who released the Die Wandaland LP, in September 2006.
[citation needed] By the end of the year he was painting full-time and continues to work consistently both through galleries and private commissions.