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Wouldn’t it be interesting if we could see some of the early sketches that Leonardo Da Vinci must have made as he was developing his idea for creating his masterwork, the Mona Lisa. (To “illustrate” this point, my artist/friend Norm Daniels created the drawings that adorn the cover of this album - his ideas of what such a sketch might have looked like.)

While I make no claim to the stature of a Da Vinci, the same principle does apply here: when I am in the process of creating a new original tune, or when I am developing an idea for an arrangement for my own version of an existing song that I want to emulate, I will often record a basic experimental version - a “sketch” - of the idea that is percolating in my mind, as part of the creative process (developing that idea and bringing it along to maturity)…

In the early 1980s, I was living in the town of Fallbrook (in northern San Diego county). This was a time when I had a lot of music stimulus going on. I was in the process of launching the Packards band; we had just recorded the Pray For Surf album, and we were preparing to go back into the studio to record the Beach City Bop album; plus we were beginning to play at many of the live music venues all over So Cal. The worldwide “surf music revival” was in full swing, and I was determined to make the most of it. As the decade progressed, I would be busy with playing live shows and recording numerous albums, both with the Packards’ band and others featuring my solo-multitrack concoctions. So in 1981, in anticipation of all this, I set out with a multitrack recorder (a Teac 3340), not to make finished albums, but just to develop my musical repertoire. This resulted in a number of simple two-guitar + bass versions (sketches), of many of the tunes that I would go on to play and record later in the ‘80s and beyond.

Ever since then, these recordings have just been sitting idle in my computer, in a file titled “sketches.” Until now, none of these tracks have seen the light of day (none have been publicly released); but with this album I am finally sharing them all with you… for one thing, I’m thinking you might enjoy comparing these with the later more fully matured versions of these tunes; plus, I simply like these versions, and I trust that you will too!

happy listening
- Paul Johnson