Sixties Demos- Volume I

by Phil Keaggy

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1.	Time's Up (Feb '68) 02:42	buy track
2.	Lost In The Dark (Dec '67) 02:52	buy track
3.	Chasin' The Kids (Aug '68) 02:48	buy track
4.	Today (Apr '68) 03:11	buy track
5.	Say What You Mean (May '68) 03:08	buy track
6.	Makin' Bread (Aug '68) 02:05	buy track
7.	Sands Of Time (Feb '67) 01:42	buy track
8.	Joe's Country (Aug '68) 02:24	buy track
9.	The Way I Feel (Feb '67) 02:50	buy track
10.	Looking Everywhere (Feb '67) 01:44	buy track
11.	Marshmellow (Aug '68) 07:50	buy track
12.	A Children's Fantasy (Mar '68) 04:20	buy track
13.	Try To Love (Mar '68) 02:13	buy track
14.	Bossa Magic (Aug '68) 03:05	buy track
15.	Never (Mar '67) 02:45	buy track
16.	Space Between (Feb '68) 02:08	buy track
17.	These Are My Days (Aug '68) 02:50	buy track
18.	It's Understood (May '68) 02:38	buy track
19.	Maid Of Time (Nov '67) 04:07	buy track
20.	In My Own Times (Jul '68) 02:44	buy track
21.	High Flight (Jul '68) 03:49	buy track
22.	I'll Be Around (Jul '68) 02:33	buy track
23.	Moonglow (Jul '68) 02:38	buy track

about

Notes on PK 60’s Demos (Volumes 1-3)

I wasn’t sure I wanted these songs to ever see the light of day, but I was encouraged by some close friends to share them here on Keaggy’s Garage. They are a glimpse into some of my earliest attempts at creating music and they are raw and sometimes immature but they are first drafts and we all have to start somewhere, right? I hope they are enjoyable and that they provide encouragement to budding musicians and songwriters.

My sister Kathy helped me get my first tape recorder (a Western Auto) when I was just in the sixth grade. With this simple machine I learned how to record a guitar part and play along with it. In 1967 I acquired a “sound on sound” recording tape machine that propelled me into a world of multi-layering of my guitar parts and vocals. It was a Roberts tape machine that was pretty advanced - you could record normal and in reverse and it had solenoid controls.

In 1965 and 66, I was in the Squires and developing as a young budding guitar player with hopes of being also a fairly decent singer someday. (Volume III is a compilation of my early band studio recordings – that is the Squires, the New Hudson Exit as well as early Glass Harp demos from 1968.)

My solo demos here from 1967 and 1968 are recordings that I had done with my sound on sound tape machine in my bedroom very close to the other rooms in our rented house. I was quite conscientious of not bothering anyone else in the house with my singing, so I sort of held back a bit. The interesting thing is, I was determined to write songs though many of them were very green and not very well developed. I had nonetheless received a great deal of encouragement from my family to go ahead and be creative and live out my dream as a youngster.

Of course, during this time, I was influenced by the Beatles, the Zombies, the Bee Gees, Yardbirds and my new guitar hero Michael Bloomfield.

For a time when I was in the ninth grade I had my amp, guitars and tape recorder in the dining room of our house and once in a while I would invite my friend John Sferra who actually played drums on a couple of these songs. I recall we were both in the ninth grade in 1967. I was quite adventurous I messed around with various effects like backwards guitar and multi-tracking my voice even though I wasn’t very good at it.
For a bass would tune my guitar down to a lower key on the last few strings and over dub the bass part with my guitar. I might have been a better bass player than a guitar player at that time.

I think I sounded even a little more grown-up as a kid in 1966 then I did on some of these demos from 1967 and 68. The reason for that being that the Squires recordings as well as “Come With Me” with the New Hudson Exit were studio recordings where there was either a producer involved or a good engineer.

In 1968, while living with my brother Dave and his family, I mailed a tape full of these songs to myself for what I thought would be a protection of my songs and copyrighting. Around 1971 I took the original tapes and I just chucked them in the garbage thinking -this music isn’t that good.

Sometime in the early 90s my brother Dave found that self-addressed package with that recorded reel to reel tape with all these songs that I had thrown away, and he sent it to me. Now, by this time I had a DAT recorder and transferred all the songs to preserve them in digital form.

Now I am glad they’re still around as they are like musical photographs of my youth. With encouragement from my friends, I am releasing them to my fans and friends out there. I couldn’t help but laugh so many times at certain ways I played my guitar, my fast quiver and my immature vocals.

Kids in their mid-teens these days are so much more advanced because of the Internet and YouTube. Back then all we had were records and tape recorders, but that’s how I learned to play, to sing and to write songs, feeble and juvenile as they were.

For the Glass Harp fans out there, you may notice that there are a few songs that have the same lyrics as a few of the Glass Harp songs. That’s because we as Glass Harp were a jam band, and I would just pull lyrics from my songs that were written a year or two before and sing them on stage to our jams. So, a couple of the songs were developed to become “Children’s Fantasy”, “Song Of Hope”, and “Whatever Life Demands” from the first and second Glass Harp albums.

In 1969 when Daniel Pecchio joined John Sferra and me in the “Glass Harp”, we all developed more as musicians and grew up quite a bit. By 1970 I invited the Lord into my heart and I really began to mature after that as a person and as a musician. As I look back all these years I’m amazed at the progress that I made within a few years! I must say I owe a lot to all my band mates during those early developing years.

So, as you listen to these songs, which are very immature but full of ambition, they give you a glimpse into a kid with a guitar who tried to learn how to grow and be a better musician with time, encouragement and determination.

At the end of volume two there is a tune called “Surfer Joe”. It’s really the first vocal song I ever tried to write but I couldn’t remember more than the first few chords and the first few lines- so just a few years back I decided to finish the song on a cheap little handheld recording device, import it into ProTools and raise the pitch to make me sound like a kid again and recorded the sound of a needle on a 45 RPM record to replicate the sound of a record. Ha!

I once played “Surfer Joe” for my friend Gordon Kennedy who got the biggest kick out of it and thought it was a hoot!

Thank you for your interest in listening to this music from my youth and thanks for your forgiveness for all its blemishes in the nutty guitar playing style I was into before I actually started to grow up.

Blessings and love
Phil Keaggy
Oct 1, 2020

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released September 11, 2020

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Phil Keaggy Nashville, Tennessee

Phil Keaggy is one of the most admired guitarists in music today. A master of both electric rock and acoustic finger style, he has been honing his craft for over 50 years.
He continues to sell out concerts all over the United States, with his ever-changing style, ranging from rock-and-roll to fully orchestrated instrumental compositions. ... more

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