 |
| Original Watching and Waiting cassette album insert, 1992 |
Solo Projects1991-1993My life changed a bit in 1990. I got my frst girlfriend, Amy Johnson (where are you now, Amy?) and I also got my first job: bagging groceries at the Harris Teeter on Folly Rd. in Charleston. It was hell, but that's another story. Anyway, I was still playing in The Rotting Potatoes at this time, but that summer I went to the North Carolina School of the Arts for a summer program in classical guitar. Until that point, I hadn't had too much formal training on the guitar, much less music theory, etc., so this summer gig was quite an eye opening experience for me. There was something about my exposure to the classical guitar that made a deep impression on me. I was fascinated with the "texture" of classical guitar music- the polyphony, the fast arpeggios, and the seemingly complex right hand fingering patterns. While at NCSA, I picked up a few tricks. When the fall rolled around, I broke up with The Rotting Potatoes, formed NOT, and indulged my new found taste for hard core rock to the point of no return. But then, Amy dumped me. It's hard to say exactly what prompted my big change over to playing solo acoustic guitar- perhaps it had something to do with Amy- I was pretty distraught at being ditched, but perhaps it was just the next logical step in the search of a more personal and direct form of self expression? In the spring of 1991, I broke up with NOT and decided I only wanted to do solo acoustic guitar music. I began writing instrumental tunes, loosely based on some of the technical ideas I had encountered at NCSA the previous summer. That spring, I made a little demo tape I named Expressions, which was pretty cheezy, but hey, you got to start somewhere, right? Anyway, I don't have a copy of Expressions anymore- I don't know what happened to it. I sold a few copies here and there. I'd say it was only a half hour of music- all guitar, including a duo for guitar and piano that I did with Chris Carson, my drummer from Rotting Potatoes days. The following autumn, my senior year in high school, I continued to play and write solo tunes, and in the spring I entered The Charleston Second Annual Acoustic Playoffs. This was basically a contest among local songwriters, sponsored by Cafe 99 (a bar in Charleston) a radio station (perhaps 96 Wave FM of NOT fame?) and a few other sponsors. It involved playing gigs at Cafe 99, usually before a pretty large audience. Judges decided who got to advance through the rounds, and as luck would have it, when it was all said and done, I came in second place. I continued to play gigs around in Charleston all through the spring and summer. I also made another "album," called My Very Own Self Portrait, which I recorded on my 4-track and which was perhaps a notch better than Expressions. It was full length, and had mostly brand new songs on it. Around this same time, I met Carroll Brown, a local sound engineer, producer, and studio owner. I took my original 4-track tapes of Portrait and re-mixed them in his studio, Mastertrax. I also recorded a couple other tracks and came up with my first, official album, Watching and Waiting.
|
Expressions (1990)
My Very Own Self Portrait (1991) 1. Collage 2. Soda
Watching and Waiting (1992) 1. Airhead 2. Cornbread 3. Dart 4. Aerial Boundaries 9. 21 10. Little Big Bug 11. Song of the Ancient Tribal Men
The Lost Album (1993) 1. Airhead (remix) 3. Slow Burn 4. Fast Burn 5. Watching and Waiting (remix) 6. Line 7. Dart (remix) 8. World 10. Two Years Ago (remix) 10. Memories We Own
|
Watching and Waiting At this point in my life, I had forsaken most of the hard core bands that so inspired me in NOT and got really into some acoustic players. Alex DeGrassi, Leo Kottke, and of course, Michael Hedges, who was my biggest idol at the time. I have since come to question certain aspects of Hedges' writing style, but the man's contribution to modern guitar techinque can not be denied, and I eagerly took to incorporating a lot of his ideas into my own tunes. I also decided to try doing some songs with vocals. I've never felt comfortable writing lyrics or singing. Something about both of those activities makes me feel really exposed and vulnerable. Part of the reason is that my lyrics are not that great. It's like I have something to say, but I don't really know how to say it- at least in words. As a result, my lyrics always sound a little ambiguous and pseudo-arty. They're probably not as bad as some other peoples' lyrics, and they're certainly better than NOT's :-) but as a creative person, I've always been a lot more interested in making music without words. I feel like it's a lot more directly connected to what it is I want to say.
|
The Lost Album... was recorded at Carroll Brown's place in 1993, the summer between my freshman and sophomore years at college. The album was almost completed- I just needed to do some more mixing, but for some reason or another, I never finished it. Some of the songs never got named, and I never had a name for the album, either. It wasn't until I rediscovered the tapes in the fall of 2003 that I dubbed it The Lost Album. When I went back to college in the fall of 1993, I got totally distracted, and I began growing in a different musical direction, which is why I think I never really followed through with it. There are some good songs on it, I think, but overall it sounds way too much like Michael Hedges... The Lost Album comprised almost all new songs, all written my freshman year in college. The few tunes that are repeats (Airhead, Dart, 21) I had revised enough that I thought they should be re-recorded. Although I still have the original 2-inch reel from the recording sessions, the digital master that I mixed that summer is now lost. The tracks I have for this album I took from two old cassettes that are disintegrating as we speak. As a result, the sound quality is somewhat poor, but some of the songs are ok. I digitized all of them and tried to clean them up a bit, but I was only marginally successful. If I'm ever around a 2-inch 24 track analog recorder again, perhaps I'll remix it enough to get a good copy of it. Until then, this is all I got :-) |