Here's some backstory on these songs:

In December 2003, after living a post acid grey gloom deteriorating happiness and health three years in an apartment above a pizza place on Queen street in Toronto, i packed everything i had into our old van and drove back to my parents house in Moncton for sanctuary.

I arrived home after an icy 20 hour drive to a full out snowstorm, unloaded all my stuff into the old basement room that i hadn't lived in since Eric's Trip recorded "Love Tara" there in 1993, then sat down exhausted on my old bed as the power went out. Back to the womb.

I set up my old 1/2" 8track the next day and got right into finishing up ELEVATOR's "August" album. We got most of it recorded over the autumn in Toronto but i still needed to add a few things and mix it. Mark Gaudet would come over once a week to hang out, it was great seeing him more regularly again, most of the time though i just sat down there alone figuring things out, painting, writing songs and recording.

As usual, i always like to record songs the same day i write them. Get it all out at once. I recorded at least one a day, sometimes more. Its always been my main method of getting heavy thoughts together and i had a lot to tend to. Between December 2003 and June 2004, i filled 23 - 70 minute CDR's (which is what i was mixing down to at the time) with songs and mixes. My old 8track machine was falling apart and i just kept recording over old tapes again and again. The fidelity gets mushier and dirtier as the months went on but these masters are some of the last stuff recorded on that old machine thats faithfully recorded basically everything i'd done since ERIC'S TRIP's "Forever Again" album in 1994.

At the time, I was mostly trying to come up with songs for a possible 2nd Unintended album which is why a lot of the songs had that kinda feel to them compared to the heavier ELEVATOR style stuff i also write. That project never came together and in late summer 2004, i packed up again and moved out to the country in Ontario. Reborn into a new life in the woods where I set up my first protools studio and got to work re-recording 16 of these demos for what became my first RickWhiteAlbum released in 2005.

That left a lot of good songs unused so i've finally made this collection for the archive. It contains the only new tune The Unintended did perform while on tour in 2004 called "ALL PASSED AWAY" as well as "ANNA LEE" and "HEART OF WOOD" which i wrote for the Sadies (though Dallas rewrote some of the lyrics to the last one). Also 12 more favourites that have never been released or re-recorded. They document this period of transition just as much as the 16 i re-did on the RickWhiteAlbum do. Being in my childhood home again, buried in between two very different lives.. I hope you enjoy hearing these recordings, you can hear that womby winter and mushy old anaolg 8track tape in the mixes. I'm really glad i still have them all and i'm glad i made them.
Thanks friends.

*note - cover photo was taken in my basement room at my folks house in Moncton N.B. on Feb 1st 2004 by my Mom.
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