Early pre-The Ataris demos

Many of these were demos written in the early 90's before I started writing and recording the songs that would largely make up The Ataris first album "Anywhere But Here"

Before that (from maybe age 13-15) I played guitar and wrote songs in a local band in Indiana.
Although I didn't sing in that band.

Most of these songs were written after that band went our separate ways and I started demoing my own first songs on my 4-Track using my Alesis HR-16 drum machine.

A lot of these song ideas fell to the wayside along with countless others.
We went in and properly recorded a few of the better songs from this era on what was our "October in This Railroad Earth" E.P.
which we later packaged together with a few new songs and new demos as our "Silver Turns to Rust" LP.

But here you can listen to a few of the actual demos from that pre-The Ataris era to kind of give you a small window into what eventually became The Ataris.

"Going Back to Madiera" is a cover of a tune that Jasin and his friend wrote from their band which we later played in the early two and three piece version of The Ataris.
I always loved that tune and wish we recorded it at some point. The music became "Giving Up on Love" but "Going Back to Madiera" was always the far better song.
Unfortunately the only version I have is this instrumental but who knows maybe I'll play it for you at one of my online acoustic performances coming up! So you can see how much this song ripped.

"Letter to The Editor" I wrote the day Kurt died. I remember hearing Courtney on the radio reading his suicide note while I was driving around that day and it was pretty surreal. The title was a line from that and sort of about how so many wonderful people are gone all to fast and in an instant.

"Audience of One" was written about when I would sit in my room and play Lemonheads and Teenage Fanclub songs for my cat Jose.

FVGAZI-esque was me taking my first attempt at writing an instrumental tune and one where each instrument part did it's own individual thing. Which FUGAZI were always just soooo fucking good at.
I write the working title as FVGAZI because that was always the way they stenciled it on their amps.

"Shallow" was probably one of the very first songs I ever wrote. And was written at that early 90's time when all I listened to was blatantly Dinosaur JR., Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine or all the SUB POP stuff. Was before I really got into punk rock and was more soley into indie / ALT rock stufff. I did it totally backwards.

The "Vent-Age" title is an obvious nod to the Descendents and a double entendre. Like I am venting to you but mixed with the word "Vintage" meets the Descendents = "Vent-Age" oh whatever. :)

"Samiam-esque" (An obvious working title and a nod to my friends Samiam) is a tune I think I've turned into like five other songs over the years but for some reason I've never recorded the actual tune. Ha. I dunno. Always liked it. It has vocals but I don't have a version with them, maybe some day I finally will.

The house in the photo is where I grew up and spent most of my adolescent and teenage years, writing and recording these songs. It's the one that "Looks out at the fairgrounds" from "Hero Dies in This One" My father much later also passed away in that house.
So many memories.

OK. That's it for this one. Be safe and be well. Enjoy.