The first musical recordings I have where the music content is still discernable from the tape noise are with Jeff Kincaid, a friend I met in High School in the Chicago area. But this was not my first experience playing music in a band or group setting.

My music journey started in a church youth group strumming along with other acoustic guitar players, trying not to play wrong chords. A little later, I was a part of a band named Epoch that was comprised of friends in my early High School years that had fun playing music together, developing our musical chops with the experience. Most of the songs in that band were written by Rod (guitar) or Nate (bass) Young in the beginning. Dave Warburton joined the group early on playing keyboards. After Rod Young left for Bethel College, Dave Dillon (vocals, keyboards, guitar) and Jack Sanford (vocals) joined the group, and I believe we played a few concerts as evidenced by one of the recordings that were made that I still have. One early song that was a 50's type song was "Saga Blues", the Wheaton College dining hall food service where most of us worked. As I remember, Nate was really into the Beatles at that time, which helped define our musical journey back then. Love Song, the California Christian music group that Chuck Smith of Calvary Chapel helped expose to the nation released their first album in 1972, and we covered some of their songs with Dave Dillon and Jack Sanford in the band. Epoch was the band where I determined (at the time) that I really wanted to play music, perhaps professionally. After all, both of my parents were proficient piano players, just a very different style of music! Dave Dillon wrote some great songs at the time which still go through my mind occasionally when I plunk around on the piano. I found one of those recordings, but I think I'll leave it RIP on the tape due to the recording quality. It did bring back some memories of music we were playing back in the early 70's, and the development of our musical abilities in the 2 years we played together.

Jeff and I met soon after Epoch disbanded. Jeff was into different tunings, which was totally new to me. Jeff and I spent hours talking and playing music in his parents basement with a 2 track reel to reel recorder. I remember that we would always pray in the beginning to "get the hell out of there" before we set about creating and playing music together. Jeff was a great friend, a timely person in my life, musical and otherwise. Jeff and I did music together till I left Illinois for Texas and college.

This song was written by Jeff Kincaid back in 1974 or 5. I'm not sure we ever played this one live in the coffeehouse as I don't remember having anything but guitars and our voices there. Jeff played the guitars, I played the Mini Moog synth (my first synth!) and bass on this song. Jeff did the lead vocal and I did background vocals.

Very rough - originally recorded on a reel to reel tape and copied to a cassette tape which has seen better days, which is the basis of this recording. I came up with the musical roadmap and a few lyrics which Jeff and I collaborated on to finish out the lyrics and the music on this song. Jeff had a Stratocaster - my first introduction to that guitar which I thought had an amazing ability to create a very unique timbre to any guitar playing. Jeff and I did all the guitar work and vocals on this song. At the time there were no drum machines. We considered looking around for a drummer to join with us, but that never worked out logistically with where we practiced - his parents basement.