Hi! Craig, here...
I'd like to welcome you to my humble home on the internet. You're encouraged to visit often to be part of this work-in-progress. As the site progresses you'll find a variety of new content including photos, videos, poems and music.
This site features a collection of home-recorded originals. With few exceptions, this song collage has been a solo labor of love spanning six decade's worth of hopes, dreams, sweat, frustration, elation, tears, and a lot of bad language. It has been an addition to those musical greats whose influence has helped shape the soundtrack of my life.
With the alarmingly increasing passing of friends and family, I have been motivated to clean up these demo's that I once thought would be re-recorded in a studio someday, but time is tight, and in reality I'll probably never get around to doing so. Lacking good production and arrangements, I still feel these recordings deserve to be left behind as evidence of a life lived as a songwriter/artist. God willing, I will be able to get to the other hundred or so songs from which these few were picked.
Again, virtually all songs, from the writing, to the track-by-track recording, are a solo effort. I ask myself why I never got a group together or recorded in the studio. It certainly isn't because I lacked the desire to do so. The process would have been much easier and arguably better if I'd had the extra ears, input, and expertise of other musicians and industry professionals. Perhaps it was because I felt I'd lose control of the process. I guess I just never found the right musicians to work with. It seems I always lacked the funds necessary to maintain having instruments at my disposal for writing/recording/performing, much less for buying studio time. Either way, what you hear is just me*.
About my roots...
My passion has been music since I heard my first Beatle record. I'm pretty sure it was the United Artist's soundtrack, "A Hard Day's Night." If not, it was "Help!" then "A Hard Day's Night." Then came "Revolver." The sweet sound I heard coming from those speakers was so far removed from everything else. The melodies, song structure and texture of their vocals were so highly addictive. The harmonies. Good Lord, the harmonies! Like every other Beatle fan, I remember that when I first heard their "sound" my head exploded. (and I was only 6 or 7)
Those records left an indelible imprint on my psyche that, to this day, no artist since has done. Perhaps it was just the magic of childhood. Or perhaps, just maybe, it was that as an impressionable child I witnessed, in real-time, the unfolding of a musical and societal revolution that forever changed the world as we know it.
Shortly thereafter, (1967) I started my formal training learning to read sheet music and play the snare drum as part of a marching band called, The Weldonians. They performed half-time shows for the Oakland Raiders and various city parades. That was right around the time my folks got me my first drum set for Christmas. I was ecstatic! (but my parents and siblings probably wanted to kill me!)
It's important to me that visitors understand my history, because sounding "contemporary" has never been a concern of mine. I've always written from the heart and have remained true to the songwriting style and sound I aspire towards.
FYI
For those of a certain age and younger:
Prior to the digital revolution, the home recording process was tediously intensive. The challenges were even greater if you would be recording all the tracks yourself. Having to start somewhere, I usually led with the drum or acoustic guitar track.
**Back then, if you didn't have the money to invest in studio time, you'd purchase a 2 (4 or 8) track tape recorder. This allowed for recording up to 1 (3 or 7) tracks before having to bounce them to a monaural track 2 (4 or 8). (unless you wanted to use 2 tracks/channels for a hard left/right stereo pan mixdown of the prior recorded tracks, which I never did because I needed all the available tracks for more overdubbing) The challenge was that you had to be sure to have all track levels adjusted appropriately, because once you recorded over tracks 1 through 3 (or 7), you couldn't change your mind and go back for a redo, the original tracking would be gone.
There were no Punch In/Out or Cue List capabilities in analog recording. If mistakes were made, or a better take was desired, you'd have to re-record the whole track from start to finish again.
As it went, you'd have less signal loss (sound quality degradation) with an 8-track because you wouldn't have to ping-pong/bounce the prior tracks as many times to finish your song. With a 2-track you'd have to bounce potentially four times as many times for the same amount of tracking; thus, greater signal loss resulting on the first tracks recorded.
The need for ping-ponging lessened as recorders advanced to 16 and 24 track formats. It wasn't until around 1998 when affordable semi-pro recorders broke into the digital recording era with mini and hard disk recorders.
Basically, anyone born after 1983 has no idea how good they have it for do-it-yourself recording, and immediate internet domain/social media exposure.
*Please note that any contribution of others is credited within the given content, and that all songs are original compositions unless otherwise specified*
**The above hypothetical example assumes no board is being used in the recording/mixdown process, as was the case with my recordings**
