About.

It was twenty years ago today...

LA Stories is the story of my life, or at least one prolific period of it. Born and bred in the cold but beautiful Great Northeast region of the USA, I satiated my wanderlust as a 20-something year-old kid with a useless bachelors degree and headed out to LA in a beat up Subaru station wagon with not much more than a pile of clothes, a hot pot and my acoustic guitar (Epiphone). The Subaru died my first full day there but at least she got me there (thank you Martha!).

Up to that point, I was still learning the guitar at a pretty basic level since I only picked it up in college five years earlier. I was determined to concentrate on truly learning the instrument in my first lonely days in the big city. After all, I knew no one sans my sister Anne whose musical apex was banging out Hawaii Five-O on the piano in 8th grade (over and over!).

But LA is such a kind and loving city it doesn't let you hibernate. Within days of landing there, I found myself in a band with friends I made for life. While we were, and are, buddies, the band's dynamic brought out a competitive streak in all of us to write the songs for the band (covers? who needs them?). But as the lead guitarist, it was not only my right to be the lead songwriter for the band, it was my duty, right? So I'd rush home from my file clerk job in Century City and play with my Tascam four-track hurriedly to bring the next set of songs to the band.

Well shockingly, the band broke up - more like exploded at the launch pad (damn egos). I went back to school to get my masters in urban planning at USC and saw a lot of my friends get married or return back to their original homes (we were all transplants!). So I too returned to Syracuse to apply my degree to fixing the town I grew up in.

One winter, not long ago and after not really playing the guitar much anymore, I got the urge to catalog my entire cassette tape library from those days in LA. I found an old four-track tape machine on the internet (they're hard to find these days!) and recoded each track separately into Logic Pro. It was like playing an archeologist on a time in my life 20 years previous. And as I documented the dates scribbled on each tape, I realized I had recorded close to 60 full-length songs within an 18-month period. And some of them were actually pretty good!

So here they are - not all 60, just a smattering of songs. Of a brief yet powerful time in my life where I truly felt a burning desire to express myself; enough to learn - and fall in love with - a new instrument to do so. And here's to the luxury of being able to both reminisce and be creative 20 years after their initial penning!

I hope you enjoy it.