No sooner had I taken a stab at (what was then) the brave new world of computer based recording and self-production when along came our second child, and the battle for free time to play and record was more or less lost, at least for a while.
Time Flies
I often tell the story of how I had purchased a dual deck tape recorder in the mid 90’s, and how I had an almost Rip Van Winkle-esque moment years later, realizing how much I had gotten totally sidetracked by life. One day in 2004 or so I found myself staring at the tape deck and wondering what the heck was on the tape sitting in the once-new but now long ignored machine. I fired it up and was listening to the song idea I had apparently been working on the last time I used it, when suddenly I hear (in the background on the recording) a baby crying followed by my voice saying “I’m coming!”. That’s when I recalled the night I made that recording – it was the night after Dylan was born, 7 years prior in 1997! Christine and our newborn son had stayed in the hospital overnight and Ian (then 2 years old) and I had come home. I could hardly believe that seven years had gone by – I could almost hear the wooosshh! – and I hadn’t touched my recording equipment once in all that time.
Over the years while the kids were really young, I still played a bit and wrote from time to time. Having to play my acoustic guitar pretty quietly while the kids slept had the gradual effect of leading me to appreciate “folky” singer-songwriters more than I had when I was younger. As the first decade of the new century rolled on, I soon became of fan of Bob Dylan (hated him when I was a young prog-snob) and other musicians I never would have thought twice about as a teenager, including Jewel, Jack Johnson, and other similar mellow song smiths.
And Still I Wait …
So while the years rolled on I kept playing but had totally stopped recording. I was glad to have Pass It On to listen to from time to time and looked forward to improving on it when the time was right. One song on that record that that I still appreciate is “And Still I Wait …”. As with all the other songs on this collection, it was still a very amateur recording, but the song itself had some promise. Years later, I had some fun making this video by playing the song on my computer and using Camtasia to record those cool Windows Media Player visuals that were popular in older versions of Windows.
Next … Fast Forward to 2011 and my first professionally mixed song, “My Blue Eyed Girl“