The Farewell Demo Tape

It was a sweaty August weekend and I was up against a deadline or two.

The date was Saturday, August 11, 1990. Sunday night, I would be driving to Syracuse to get on a train. Those long twin silver lines (yes, a Bob Seger reference) would then take me to Austin, Texas. There was a lot to be accomplished before leaving town. As you can imagine, there were a lot of loose ends to tie up, and many friends to visit.

But there was also one little musical adventure that needed to be finalized. There was a demo tape that needed to be recorded.

I will admit that the last minute chain of events made my last weekend in Canada just a little crazier than I had imagined. But, it also left me with some fantastic memories and a farewell demo tape for the archives.

First things first. As a musician, when you are given an offer for free time in a recording studio, you take it. Back in the year 1990, if you were given an offer for free time in a digital recording studio, you jumped at the opportunity.

One warm summer night, I happened to be playing my guitar on my front porch. One minute I was just playing some riffs, and the next minute I was talking to a passer-by that happened to own a local studio. He mentioned that he had just put in some new digital equipment, liked what he was hearing from my front porch that evening, and wanted me to come in and record some tracks. The best part? It wouldn’t cost me a thing.

So what’s the catch, you say? There wasn’t one. Well, there was one minor issue:  I knew that I was leaving town soon. Very soon.

It wasn’t my plan to wait until the last minute to do this. My musical partner-in-crime, guitar-playing-bass-thumping vocalist Terry Baldwin, would of course need to join me in the studio. Terry and I had played together while we were students at Queen’s University. But as luck would have it, the only time he could come to Brockville to record was, yes, you guessed it, the day before I was planning on leaving the country. Timing is everything.

Terry arrived with bass in hand and we headed off to the studio. Fortunately, we had played together many times in the past. I pulled out two original songs that we had played before – “From Themselves” (with lyrics), and “Always” (instrumental). For an added treat, we threw in a song that we had always enjoyed jamming on: “Papa Was A Rolling Stone” by the Temptations. It was one voice, one guitar, one bass, and a drum track. I don’t think we did more than about 2 takes for any given song, unless it was to punch in another guitar track or solo.

It took just a few hours. We walked out of there on Saturday afternoon with the tracks recorded.

The next day, I finished packing and hit the road for an adventure that brought me to my current home.

The recordings? They were eventually mixed down into a demo tape which arrived in my mail box a few months later. Lo and behold, I found a digital audio master and a cassette tape. The rest, as they say, is history.

To this day, I can listen to it and be reminded of that crazy August weekend. It still serves as a wonderful memento of one of the last days I spent in Canada. Perhaps more importantly, it was a great audio snapshot of spending time with one of my best friends doing something we both loved. You can’t ask for much more than that on a sweaty August weekend in Brockville.

Postscript: Terry Baldwin continues to play in a band called “Phantom Limb”, an extremely diverse musical departure from our days playing blues, soul, and rock together at Queen’s University. One thing has not changed though - that boy sure can play!

Photo credits: Knowtex