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Issue No.2 – The Vault Opens
It turns out Prince wasn't the only musician with a vault.
No, I'm definitely not comparing myself to Prince.
But over the last few weeks I've been opening boxes of hard drives, DAT tapes, CDs and cassettes that I haven't looked at in decades.
Somewhere along the way I accidentally built something I now call THE DEMO COLLECTION—more than a thousand recordings spanning decades of writing, experimenting and recording.
Things have been a little dusty around my place lately.
What started as a little housekeeping has turned into an archaeological dig.
Every box seems to contain another surprise. Songs I haven't heard in twenty or thirty years. Half-finished ideas. Complete albums I barely remembered making. Handwritten track sheets. Master tapes.
I still don't know exactly how much music is here.
But it's a lot.  I had an entire room devoted to making music. I painted the walls my favorite cherry red, surrounded myself with equipment, and spent thousands of hours writing and recording.
Ed's Place, which is now my most popular track ever, was recorded in that room. So were dozens of other pieces that eventually became part of
THE DEMO COLLECTION.  I also found this photograph.
That's me at about thirty years old, living in a gigantic Capitol Hill house that was...let's generously call it "well worn."
Looking at that photo is like opening a time capsule.
That Gateway computer looked enormous back then. The monitor alone probably weighed forty pounds.
Most of the recording wasn't done inside the computer. Vocals and instruments were recorded onto a Tascam 8-track reel-to-reel machine using half-inch tape.  That monster cost me about $5,000, which was an outrageous amount of money for me at the time.
The reels of Ampex 456 tape cost around $50 each and only held about
33 minutes of music.
I learned very quickly not to waste tape.  Listening to these tapes has been strangely emotional.
You're hearing the voice of someone who no longer exists.
A younger version of me.
Full of ideas.
Full of ambition.
Completely convinced there would always be another song to write.
He spent thousands of hours in that little studio, and I'm grateful he did.
Because today I'm discovering music I honestly forgot I'd ever made.
At last count, I've uncovered more than 1,000 recordings—songs, instrumental pieces, experimental tracks, commercial music, and everything in between.
I found a 30-second TV theme I wrote for a cooking show once! That track got me into ASCAP as both a writer and publisher!
It feels less like looking through old files...
But I'd rather you hear them directly.
...and more like opening THE DEMO COLLECTION.
There were songs and instrumentals that I usually made in a day or two and then moved on to the next idea. My philosophy has always been--if you want to be a working artist, you have to be prolific. You have to make A LOT of stuff.
So I did. And now…
I'd like you to have these first four tracks.
They're also available on Spotify and the other streaming services.  Once the file comes down to your device, just click it to open.
These are high-res MP3 files. They've been fully mastered.
Over the coming months, I'll be sharing more of what I discover inside this huge collection.
Some tracks have already been released. Others have never been heard outside my studio.
It's going to be fun opening these boxes together.
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