False Starts (1986)

Genre: Vocal jazz, Bossa nova

After several unsuccessful relationships for both of us, my wife and I found each other and married 37 years ago in the month of June. I composed the song “False Starts” on the guitar as a wedding gift to my wife, the lyrics a reflection of the winding path that put us together.

Our wedding was a low-budget, DIY affair and it was everything we could have wished for. Family members catered the food, potluck style; dear friends preserved memories in photos and videos. Background music for the reception was provided DJ-style from a series of mixtapes on cassettes of all our favorite songs at the time. Two more mixtapes provided the dance music for our more energetic guests. I reproduced that exact soundtrack as a curated playlist in Spotify and Apple Music entitled “Wedding Mixtape 1986.”

I recorded an acoustic guitar version of the song the year I wrote it, with the help of my brother’s drum machine and what limited multitrack resources we had available to us at the time. On the original recording, I played the instrumental “trumpet” interlude on a Casio SK-1 sampling keyboard, a “toy” we had purchased for my stepson for the holidays. At the time is was the closest I could get to a horn sound.

Later, in celebration of my wife’s 60th birthday, I crafted a new arrangement for a performance by local jazz musicians at Dazzle jazz club in Denver. On that very special night, our daughter, Anna, then a vocal student at the University of Colorado, eagerly volunteered to surprise her mom with this new “anniversary” rendition of the song, singing the words that I had written before she was even born (!)

The rhythm section for that 2011 Dazzle performance was a group of young musicians now famous in the Colorado jazz community—the Annie Booth Trio (Annie Booth on piano, Patrick McDevitt on bass and Alejandro Castaño on drums). The performance also featured a flugelhorn solo by the president of the non-profit Gift of Jazz, David Froman.

So this is a great opportunity to give a shout-out to the wonderful folks at Gift of Jazz. It was through their Saturday adult jazz education classes that many of my later jazz compositions were realized.

Gift of Jazz

Pairs well with Spotify, Apple Music Playlist “Wedding Mixtape 1986”

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Ports of Boulder (1978)

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Smart Bomb (1993)