Alex & I Ponder Our Permanent Trek

May, 2006
San Diego, CA

  OK.  Hello websurfer.  I've been putting this off long enough, or maybe it's because I'm billeted in a 28' motorhome with my 3 minor children and need something to do for the next 6 weeks while we ponder our permanent trek to Seattle in June.

   In any event, this website is sort of a combination memoir and a sampling of my recorded output from 1975 through 1985, and new recordings as may appear from time to time.  Only a 20+ year hiatus!  This will be a continuing work in progress, so please check back from time to time to see & hear new/old songs as they are posted.

   I used to keep a running master tape of all the songs I wrote and recorded with dates, times & inane commentary so this isn't completely fabricated, but I do intend to make up what I can't remember.  I also plan on getting sidetracked as much as possible with links to songs, people, bands, places and events as my memory/imagination permits in the spirit of a true "web".   Every song can be accessed with the   SONG PAGES LINK - NEW TO OLD   link and has its own page with lyrics, comments and pictures, plus a little flash player to hear the song.  You might have to install Adobe Flash to make the song player work which you can get for free here.   There is also a download link on each song page to save the MP3 to your computer, iPod, etc.   As I was advised on a B.B. King album once upon a time, these songs are meant to be played at volume, so crank it up, plug it into your stereo or please listen through headphones!   You can also click on any picture you see to get the full size version. 

   For better or for worse, I wrote all of these songs and played all of the instruments, unless otherwise noted.  There is a link on each song page to download and I would be honored to have a tune or two on your iPod.  Cut me a percentage if you ever use my music to sell dog food or for other pecuniary gain (all rights reserved), but otherwise feel free to email, copy, cover or otherwise distribute these songs.  Maybe make a donation to your favorite charity, be nice to somebody on the freeway or patronize the arts and of course come out, drink some beer and see me play live somewhere in Seattle or San Diego, assuming that ever happens again.

   Having all this taped music from 20 - 30 years ago is kind of like having a box full of pictures that never sees the light of day or a biography that is never written.  I put a lot of time and energy into these songs back then and this will get them out there where they can air out, feel the breeze of the internet and preserve my wasted youth. 

Wasted Youth

  Each song is a story or has a story and I'll try to get some of that out here.
 
  I was born in 1957 in Mt. Vernon, WA as Elvis Presley drove by the hospital.   There was a lot of music around our house growing up.  Dad was a career educator and/but had/has a touch like no other on the piano without formal training of any kind.  He loved to play as much as Mom would let him.  Roll out the Barrel!!   Mom played piano well but didn't.   My siblings all played horns in school band and/or sang in the choirs and there was a pretty steady cacophony occurring early on.   The old Magnavox and most transistor radios were tuned to KJR in Seattle during those long '60s summers and churned out the Beatles, Herman's Hermits, Motown hits, the Stones and Cream.  I'll never forget the first time I heard Clapton's tone in "Sunshine of Your Love" in '67 or '68.   I was hooked. 

   In the late '60s/early '70s I listened to whatever was popular off of the radio as grade school passed by along with records my brother and sisters had and ones I later purchased - the Beatles, Doors, Guess Who, Three Dog Night, The Who, Creedence, Grass Roots, Dennis Yost & the Classics Four, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Clapton.  The first two albums I bought and paid a fortune for at Hugo Helmer Music ($6 apiece!) in Mt. Vernon were Magical Mystery Tour and McCartney's first solo effort.   I played trombone in the band, but started fooling around with the guitar that my brother Richard had by the time I was in eighth grade or so.  

   I knew a few chords by the time I started high school, but something happened after my freshman year when I turned 15 and I started to play a lot. 

   I visited Richard for a month in Phoenix during the summer of '72 and during the day when he went to work my activities were riding somebody's bicycle around in the 110 degree heat to every Putt Putt in Phoenix and playing guitar.  All day long.   Me and Terry Kath on 8-track tape playing South California Purples and I'm a Man.   I got a decent but no name classical guitar for Christmas later that year and got my first electric, a Harmony Rocket, that next spring or summer.   I took 3 lessons (count 'em, 1, 2, 3) from classical guitar wiz Bill Blevins.  During my junior year, I used to get home from my ice cream parlor job at 11:30PM and play guitar until the next morning on the weekends - I remember the satisfaction of being able to play the guitar solo in "Maybe I'm Amazed" after a night of practice. 

 

    I met and played a gig or two with Mark Brummer, a talented guitar player from Mt. Vernon.   I think we played a dance at the Y and someplace in Arlington.  We played tunes by Led Zeppelin, Bad Company, Grand Funk, Clapton, BTO, Kiss, Doobie Brothers, Uriah Heep, ZZ Top - whatever had lots of loud rock guitar. 

   I met the talented Steve Acero sometime in the spring of '74 who had moved up from San Bernardino with his brother Avery and family. Steve and Avery had nice gear and Steve had a truly unique style for the time using his thumb as a pick - through Steve I started listening to Ronnie Montrose, Leslie West and Johnny Winter and other blues powered guitar dominated bands.  (Which bands weren't in 1974?)

   The summer after my junior year I spent a good portion of my cannery and pea viner money on a beautiful Les Paul Custom that I wish I still had today, and various amps and gear.

  Steve and I started a band with drummer John Lee that next fall called "Sidewinder" and played a few gigs - high school dance, rec center, mall dance marathon, etc.

  About this time 4 track recorders were becoming available for a decent price that allowed a single musician to multi-track songs and play all the instruments. 

   In the summer of '75 after I graduated, I bought a Dokorder reel to reel 4 track and started writing and recording some simple tunes by myself.  

   I went to Washington State University that fall - I should have moved to Seattle instead and worked on the band with Steve & John, but got into a band at Pullman named "Powertramp" with David Pierson from Burlington on drums, Jerry Stover on guitar, Jack Showalter on bass and Bruce McKinnon on keyboards.  We played "Dirty Rock" according to the promo poster I still have and will post if I can find it.   We played a few gigs but I left school and the band after a semester and went to Hawaii for a few months with my friend John Chrysler which was an experience.  I remember riding my bicycle outside the Aloha Bowl in Honolulu while the Eagles were playing inside - Joe Walsh had just joined them and you could hear those trademark Walsh lines floating out through the palm trees.   Shoulda bought a ticket.  I played a lot in Hawaii but didn't record or get any bands going.  I worked in a pineapple cannery and steakhouse, and John & I were pretty busy trying to pay the rent and avoid being beaten up by our psychotic neighbor Attila the Hun.   I sold that Les Paul to a service guy with a buzz cut in Honolulu who wanted to know in a heavy southern accent if the kind of music I played was "acid rock".  He had cash.  

   In early summer '76, I returned to Burlington and worked for the cannery, then moved to the "shack" in Clear Lake in September of 1976.  

   I was listening to a lot of guitarists including Alex Lifeson of Rush, Robin Trower, Brian May, Terry Kath, Clapton, Gary Richrath, early Michael Schenker in his UFO days, Billy Gibbons of course and that guy from Blue Oyster Cult - excellent guitarists all.   I was a huge Rush fan early on - I really appreciated their high standards and musicianship.   

   I got a mini-studio set up with the 4 track Dokorder, a Teac cassette deck, a small Tascam mixer, borrowed some drums from the lovely Leslie Lemley, bought a Gibson bass and started writing and recording.   Late 1976, all of 1977 and most of 1978 was a very prolific and creative period.   I got an additional 4 track (Akai) in early 1978 which was a wonderful machine.  I would work during the summer and fall for the cannery, take off the winters & springs and played and recorded constantly.  

  I played with a couple of bands during that period - the talented Don Freeborn, Paul Sanders & Mike ??? in a band called "Freeborn"; and also later with the one and only Wayne Hayton, Mark Stendal and Danny Hansen in somewhere over the "Rainbow", but I generally wrote and recorded on my own with a couple of notable exceptions. 

   The creative, lovable and complicated Brian Heyntsen, who was a year ahead of me at Burlington, stopped in occasionally, and we recorded a couple of his tunes - Brian has a really great voice and was a good songwriter.  John Chrysler would come over and jam.  My friend Randy Jensen was writing lyrics and I put some of them to music.  Steve Acero would come over and was a great guitarist, but I could never get him interested in recording, although I stole one of his licks for a tune I did  ("See You Soon").  I also met Ron Watters and Carmel Peterson during that time, and we made a few recordings in the Clear Lake studio sometime in late 1978 or early '79.   Carmel has a terrific voice and I wrote "Catholic Screamer" years later after hearing her belt out a night's worth of rock & roll at some club in Yakima in '85.   

   I moved to Seattle in the spring of 1979, set up a studio (the "South 132nd St. Studio") in a rental house in Riverton Heights and met the Frazer cousins - Rick & Kevin of Sumner/Puyallup for a short lived trio "Teaser" - (I wonder how many bands in the USA were named "Teaser" in 1979?), but traded that in early 1980 for the guitar slot in Ron & Carmel's band "Snapshot" with Paul Gibson on drums and Mike Creary on bass.   I stayed with Snapshot for about a year and we were on the road a good share of the time in Alaska, Washington and California.   I drove a taxi then put mufflers on cars for a few months in 1981 in West Seattle (remember when the bridge was out?) then went back on the road as a single through the Belmont Agency in Seattle late that year. 

 

My first single road gig - I was playing in the "Rod & Reel Room"

   My first single road gig through Belmont and culture shock was at the Dale Rollfs Restaurant in Pt. Angeles where they wanted to hear Willie Nelson tunes, so I started listening to and learning a bunch of country in a hurry which was like a foreign language to me at the time. 

   I checked into the "All View" motel and started woodshedding.   I never knew wonderful songs like "Crazy", "Welcome to My World", or "You Don't Know Me" even existed, and really started to love old country from the 50's & '60s.   Jim Reeves, Marty Robbins, Patsy Cline, Web Pierce, George Jones - what a goldmine and I owe it all to that funky (and I mean FUNKY) restaurant/bar in Pt. Angeles. 

   A pretty constant stream of gigs in Alaska, Washington and British Columbia followed into 1982 as a single, then I moved to Fairbanks with Paul Gibson to take on a house gig at the Cabaret/Tommy's Elbow Room in September of 1982 with Paul, Mike Thibodeau on keys and Darren Gallager on bass.   I got a Fostex 8-track while I was up in Fairbanks that I had set up at the club.   Recorded a couple of things there.   Fairbanks lasted a year and a half, then after a travel hiatus to Australia I went back to the single in 1984 through Belmont and played Montana, Alaska, Idaho, Washington, Oregon and even Wyoming.  A lot of rooms and a very singular lifestyle, but I was certainly working a lot - 5 or 6 nights a week in what were mostly hotel gigs.   I was on the road most of the time, but moved back to Clear Lake briefly and recorded my album Tom's Electric #1 in early 1985 in about 10 days - no live drums which I regret - the curse of the digital drum machines had started.   I bought an old Ford Caveman motorhome that I outfitted with the Fostex and did some of the last recordings in late 1985 on the road.  

   I downsized in 1986 and sold the Fostex gear and motorhome, stayed on the road most of 1986 into 1987 before moving down to Hollywood in the fall of '87 for my year of guitar school at GIT.    I was still writing songs here and there, but that was pretty much it for the recording.   After GIT, I went back on the road as a single from 1988 into 1990, but didn't do any more studio type recording.  I pretty much quit doing music for $$$ (or make that $) after moving to San Diego in the summer of 1990, got married & had kids, went back to school for the legal thing, etc.   

   Sooo - this site is a sampling of all of my recordings from 1975 - 1985.   The tapes got moved around but somehow survived.   They weathered years in storage in Mom & Dad's basement and I finally got around to digitizing them a few years back for posterity.  I've tweaked the EQ and added a bit of compression here and there, but these sound pretty much the way they did when I recorded them.     

   Early on, all of the stuff was recorded on a the 4 track Dokorder, bounced to a mono track on the Dokorder or stereo image cassette two track, back to 4 track for a couple more vocals or guitars before mastering to cassette.  Not the greatest audio and a lot of work, but I was pretty careful about my levels and some of it sounds pretty clean.  After I got the 2nd 4 track recorder, I used to bounce 4 tracks to stereo 2 track on the 2nd machine, add two tracks then mix back to stereo on the 1st machine, add 2 tracks, etc.  Again - a lot of bouncing but the quality was better.   I got the 8 track Fostex later which made it easier - not much bouncing and 1st or 2nd generation to stereo master.  I still have some of those 8 track masters and will get them digitized for further mixing fun someday.   Maybe add some live drums! 

   These days, buy a fast computer, some good software and an excellent mic or two or five and you have more than was possible with a fortune back in the 70's & '80's - I do have a 24 track Akai digital unit now that has yet to see the light of day, but maybe we can get some new Tomtunes on this site and record some of those written but never recorded gems.    I have a couple of nephews that are pretty heavily into writing & recording these days -----

 

Kevin Atwood -
"Coamhim"
He looked like an
artist even then!

   Kevin Atwood who lives in Phoenix and is an outstanding songwriter - www.myspace.com/coamhim and -------

 

The multi- talented Karl Blau

   Karl Blau who haunts the Pacific Northwest, loves the retro gear and is getting quite a following for his varied projects - www.kelpmonthly.com .

Thanks for visiting.

Tom Atwood
May, 2006
San Diego, CA