The Call of the Wild

It took years for me to realise that I wanted to get into songwriting and the music business, but by the time that I was sixteen years old, it seemed apparent that everyone who was in this thriving medium was making money hand over fist – and I wanted to get in on the action.

The odds were well stacked against me, but the chance for success in the field seemed worth every risk. I’d already witnessed dozens of bands fall to the wayside after the dismal results of their second major label release, but that could not deter me. I felt like a writer, and I felt like a musician. Except that I couldn’t write, nor play an instrument. But I could sing well enough, and although my training was non-existent I had a good ear. My ability to mimic other singer’s inflections landed me a job as vocalist in a band of schoolmates.

By the time I was seventeen I was hammering around aimlessly on my mom’s spinet piano and had procured a second-hand acoustic guitar. Now all I had to do was write some words. I had all that it took to make it – I had youth, optimism, and confidence.

My time had come at an odd convergence of decades. The fifties had witnessed a movement from orchestra backed vocalists to stripped down rhythm sections backing guys such as Elvis, Roy Orbison, and Buddy Holly. Then came the Beatles. Nobody wrote and played their own songs back in those days. It was unheard of.

By the mid-seventies however, folks like Todd Rundgren and Steely Dan were writing, producing, and releasing their own material. This interested me greatly. I had learned to play, by ear, everything that I’d written, and had never learned to read nor write a note of music. If I could do it all myself, I reasoned, I could avoid all of the pitfalls that came with having to describe to others what I wanted to accomplish. Although I had no clue as to what I ultimately wanted to do, I pushed ahead as if I knew precisely where I was headed.

Throughout the eighties, having become thoroughly disillusioned with rock, thanks to big hair and the Yamaha DX-7, I continued to write and compose on my acoustic guitars, and had begun to figure out how to multi-track record by bouncing tracks from one cassette recorder to the other. Compared to the standards of any decade, the noise floor was atrocious, and without the assistance of things such as compressors and gates, I was having to learn the fine art of mixing and gain control through proximity to the microphone and playback volume. Those were the options. I had attempted to co-write with others during this period, as well as release a couple of cassettes locally. Nothing that we were doing was taking me where I felt I was destined to go, and by now, nearing 30 years of age, I was beginning to feel the pressure of not having yet attained my goal.

In the early nineties, rock was enjoying a resurgence of the root emotion through which it had originally achieved popularity, but production techniques had become highly individualised, depending on who produced the bands. During this time, I remained keen to what was happening, and took mental notes, but found myself working in record stores and musical instrument retailers in order to eke out a living while trying to rear two kids from two different marriages. I was getting little accomplished otherwise. Besides buying instruments and learning to play them, of course.

It was 2005 before I had finally gathered the knowledge, the skill sets, and the equipment though which I could finally realise my dream. By this time I was 49, and the entire industry was collapsing, having been turned on its ear due to digital media and the Internet. I felt fortunate in that I had lucked into being gifted two (yes, two) Tascam 388 tape consoles by different individuals who no longer found them relevant. I built a studio in the corner of my den that I christened Good Intentions, buying rack mountable compressors, building my own cables, and learning how to connect and operate everything.

I started recording in 2006 in earnest. After re-recording a bunch of older tunes which I had written in the twenty years prior, I decided new material was in order. But what happened next was something that I’d never anticipated.

I got a Muse. Just like that, I began hearing all of these wonderful things that I’d hardly been able to recognise as not being mine before, and I began to listen, and to become passive in my role. Suddenly everything just began to happen, and I was being taken along for the ride. I was recording material in a style I’d never even dreamed of before, and although it was quite shocking, I was digging it, and amazed at what I was hearing.

It’s 2018, I’m 62 years old, and all of my equipment has suddenly become ‘vintage’. I have rebuilt the studio in a different room, and have finally structured it exactly the way that I feel it best useful to my needs. I still record to tape, but I mix down to CDs, and then convert my tunes to mp3s, and upload them on the Internet. People all over the world listen to my work.

Fame and fortune may have eluded me, but every time I fire up the equipment, put the headphones on, and start to play, I realise that I am exactly where I was wanting to go all of those years ago.

And I’m having the time of my life, by God.

Ah. Sweet success.