Pablo Picasso's Blue Period (1993)

1993 was a tumultuous year.

In March I transferred out of Las Positas Community College in the San Francisco Bay Area and moved up to Eugene, Oregon to attend the University of Oregon.

Although I completely failed the audition to get into the music program, I attended U of O anyway.

That spring I lived in the dorms and studied acting, Russian, General Ed., and performed in tons of plays with the Actor’s Cabaret of Eugene, the local community theater. This was a time when I was a bit more superstitious, so I attributed my audition failure to some cosmic sign that I should become an actor instead of a musician. And while I dove wholeheartedly into acting, I still played piano and guitar and wrote songs.

Unfortunately, the acting department at U of O was terrible. So, after passing the entrance audition to get into University of California at Irvine’s drama department, I decided to change schools and go to UC Irvine the following September.

In the summer of 1993, however, before going to Irvine, I returned to the Bay Area with a bunch of songs. I got together with my good friend Ron Guensche and recorded them in his room on a 4-track cassette recorder. We ran cables all over Ron’s house, with him mixing and “producing” in one bedroom, and me playing in another. We even rigged up a microphone set up in his bathroom, the room in every suburban home which everyone knows has the “best acoustics”.

The result was this little collection of songs: my first solo recording. Some of the songs I ended up playing in coffee shops and campus venues around Irvine, CA, where I spent the fall and winter of ‘93.

The song “A Boy And His Soundhole” ended up on the first album by the American Girls.

Ron Guensche - bass
Lara Green - flute
Leslie Tillotson - vocals
Michael Johnson - guitars, vocals

words and music by Michael Johnson, except August Rain and Saying Dante Aloud: music by Micheal Johnson and Leslie Tillotson

© 1993, Zubsongs, Ltd.