Biography

I’m happy to announce my new project for this year called “Treasures from the Demo Safe.”

I write a lot of songs.
Whenever I have time, I demo these songs in my studio.
Most of the time these recordings are very simple. Just one or two guitars and a vocal.

I frequently go back to these recordings to pitch songs to people. In the process, I always come across ones I have almost forgotten or ones that have very little commercial appeal, but that I really like.
I have hundreds of these recordings and have decided to digitally release two of them every month for a year, maybe longer.

I am aware that the title “Treasures from the Demo Safe” may come off as somewhat presumptuous. My intention is not to declare my songs as treasures of the world, rather they are treasures to me. I remember when I wrote them, the joy that came from writing with my friends, the joy of undisturbed hours in the studio, recording by myself - the joy of creating.

I like the somewhat off-handed quality of these performances because the recordings were originally not intended to be released, so there was no pressure to make something great or unusual, and the music is better off for that. Not everything is perfectly in tune or time, there might be a little glitch here or there, I might have had to move the lyric sheet while recording or move because my foot fell asleep. My favorite music was recorded like that, all the great country and blues music from the 1920s and 1930s.
A lot of these songs here live in that time, musically and lyrically.

The image of the traveler, through the physical or metaphysical realm, is one that I keep coming back to. Maybe it’s because I’ve traveled a lot in my life, maybe it’s because I grew up in a different country.
It’s an image that relates directly to that of the traveling minstrel, one that is often, for better or worse, romanticized.

American culture of the early 20th century is a great backdrop to the traveling character. So much was on the move, with one foot stuck in the 19th century, and one forging ahead into the 20th century. The impact of technological invention and progress must have been overwhelming.

A lot of the excitement and confusion about this exhilarating progress found its way into music, film, and literature.
Jimmie Rodgers and The Carter Family, Papa Charlie Jackson and Louis Armstrong, Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, Fitzgerald and Hemingway – to name only a few of the better-known protagonists – worked alongside a fascinating list of contemporaries of lesser renown.

Maybe the confusion of that era is not dissimilar to the one we experience today.
Maybe this is a reason that I find myself writing about traveling in a number of different ways and travelers of different incarnations.