1994

"The New Kind"

In the fall of 1994, I was 21 years old, newly married, and living in a studio apartment in the Lake Union area of Seattle, Washington. We had just enough money to cover our monthly rent ($300), and we hadn’t yet purchased our first stereo or television. We passed the time reading books, creating art, talking with one another, and occasionally seeing friends who would stop by from time to time.

Just before my 22nd birthday in November, I borrowed a handheld tape recorder from a friend so we could listen to the collection of cassettes we had accumulated since high school. Most of them were mixtapes we had made for ourselves, or that friends had made for us individually. It was during this time that I was hit, out of nowhere, with an intense wave of melodies and words.

I wasn’t new to writing songs. I had been in bands years prior. But for some reason, this was different. The number of “songs” that showed up quickly climbed into the 30s, then the 60s—all within a matter of weeks. The crazy part was that I didn’t even own a guitar. I had no way of playing these new songs. I simply sang whatever I had at the time directly into the cassette recorder, a cappella.

After sharing what I was up to with a friend, he generously lent me a guitar. Now, when I say “guitar,” I don’t mean some cool new or used Fender acoustic. This was a children’s learning guitar. It was small and barely stayed in tune. That didn’t stop me, however, from recording as many songs as I could into my handheld tape recorder.

From November to December of 1994, I self-released my first cassettes—Xeroxed covers and all. I was having the time of my life, with no intention of ever going beyond making a few tapes and giving them to friends for free. I saw it as just another form of self-expression, like painting or drawing.

By 1995, that would change. A close friend invited me to play a few songs at a private event where he was also performing. In attendance—unbeknownst to me—were a few people from the legendary independent record label Sub Pop Records. The rest is history.

Below is something I put together for this Substack post. A collage of sorts, of the material that I was writing and recording at the time. The recordings themselves are very raw. I hope that you will enjoy it.

Damien Jurado, November 1994, Seattle, Washington.

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