Last Night & Tonight
You know you uncover parts of your life when you clean the basement, that's usually why we put it off. I went through around a decade worth of paper, ticket stubs, wristbands, backstage passes, set-lists, charts, lyrics, potential songs, song books, CD's, and photos last night. I discovered tunes and ideas i hadn't thought of in years. It's actually pretty cool once you turn off a certain amount of remorse/regret/ghost of the past emotions. Filtered out all the old bills and threw out 10 yrs. of baggage, foldered and filed away countless 'archive' materials for my son to throw out years from now, from previous bands (I had 12 piles working at one point) and focused on the potential treasures to bring to Barrett's Hidden Agenda.
Then i found a tape labeled 'Semi-Decent 8 Trax Mixdowns.' No year marked. Ya, read that again - "Tape" and "Semi-Decent" - basically static and instruments overlayed fighting to get through the speaker and heard, occasionally with understandable lyrics. One of the songs goes back to my first foray into songwriting. The song, "Dreaming of Pictures of the Grand Canyon" just turned 20 years old last month. Another track is an instrumental cover of "Witchi Tai Tai," a native american chant recorded in the 60's that my father heard and loved, but couldn't find any info on. He didn't seek it out, but was always on the look/listen out for it for say, 30 years, and finally heard it in background to a scene in a movie. (Sleepers???) He sat 'til the end for the credits, and charged me with the mission to find the song. This was in the early days of the internet, and took long loading times, and days of searching to find it. The only CD release of it was on a folk label's box set. Needless to say, he bought it, shipped to the house - could've been my first online and Amazon purchase! Being a chant, it's the same progression repeated. He was awestruck when i played along with it by the third go round. Might've been a moment for him, like when you realize your child is actually doing something you'll never be able to do, as a person in their own right. I don't know, i'm projecting here. Anyways, it was really neat to hear early engineering and song-crafting of mine from when i was 17, and how far i've come along.
Tonight, Andrew will produce the vocals to, "Talking to the Trains." The final tracks to be laid down on this batch of songs, bringing the album one step close to print.
Baby steps are still walking.