Vinyl Destination (Part 1?)

 

Vinyl Destination (Part 1?) 

By Tom Wachunas 

"Tom Wachunas' Spare Changes is by far one of the best (and unknown/underappreciated) singer-songwriter records ever made. Classifying the album within a specific genre is a terribly difficult feat -- acid folk? folk rock? psychedelic? A true cornucopia of instrumentation -- sax, vibes, kalimba, tabla, guitars (including One St. Stephen guitarist Bruce Roberts), accordion(!) and highly introspective lyrics. Imagine being on a Caribbean cruise ship in 1975, and Neil Young happens to be croonin' with a 12-piece band on some new material that never saw the light of day. Recorded in Columbus, Ohio USA in 1975 at the now-defunct Owl Recording Studios, Spare Changes was actually Tom Wachunas's graduation project for his Masters in Fine Arts from The Ohio State University. Extremely rare -- only 1,000 copies of the original pressing were manufactured. Owl Recording Studio operated from 1973(ish) through 1977 under the direction of Tom Murphy, who would eventually go on to run the famous Track Record Studios in North Hollywood. Tom Murphy's blessing and involvement in sourcing the audio were essential in making this reissue happen."          - from Gotta Groove Records.

   Maybe consider this post as a “nostalgic resume artifact.” It seems like an eternity ago, but back in the summer of 2019, Matt Earley, President and co-Founder of Gotta Groove Records, contacted me out of the blue to let me know that he was interested in reissuing my long-out-of-print record album of original songs, Spare Changes. The album is now available again, miraculously re-mastered from the only very scratched-up copy of the album I still own (the original 8-track master tape from 1975 was lost). I am deeply grateful for, and thoroughly amazed at the technical excellence of this reborn recording, and all the remarkable work that went into achieving it. THANK YOU MATT EARLEY AND ALL THE PEOPLE AT GOTTA GROOVE Pressing Plant in Cleveland!! The reissue includes an insert with the song lyrics and new liner notes I wrote. Here those notes:  

    Who, or what, had I become by the summer of 1975 in Columbus, Ohio? The long and short of it is that the songs of Spare Changes tell the story a 24-year old geeky hippie painter who was something of an introverted poet, a mediocre self-taught acoustic guitarist, a passionate if not prolific singer-songwriter, and an inveterate Romantic striving to embrace the pleasures and pains of love and loss, of comings and goings, of hellos and goodbyes.

    Spare Changes, then, is a veritable rollercoaster ride through the emotional and spiritual peaks and valleys of various relationships with some very lovely young women in my own very young life. There’s doubt and some anger in the album opener, Blues; the bittersweet light of acceptance and gratitude offered in the album closer, Happy the Man. In between, matters of the heart understandably enough take a number of complex twists and turns. There’s palpable longing in the gentle ballad, Sailboat, and a sense of hope in Each Day’s Passing; nostalgic fondness in Remember You That Way; and again, the cathartic power of hope in I’ll Be Better Soon.

   If there’s a real burning torch song in this collection, it may well be Poets Never Win. The lyrical perspective is admittedly that of the rejected suitor who clearly has a big ego and lots of self-pity. But looking back on that particular tune in the larger sense of savoring the entire process of recording this album, I realize that unlike the poet wallowing in the resentment described in the song, I certainly did win in the end.

Beyond the thrilling experience of the actual recording sessions at Owl Studios, two memories remain especially resonant.

First, there were the rehearsal / jam sessions. On two occasions (or was it three?), about a week apart, the musicians – 10 of us at one point – and all their gear piled into the first floor of the old 2 ½-story rented house where I was living (very near the OSU campus) with a few other artist friends/classmates. Full drum set, electric instruments, tangles of wires, mics, amps… the works. The walls shook, the furniture rattled, the roof was risin’. Wide-eyed, smiling neighbors from around the block came up onto the long front porch, their faces pressed against the screened windows, peering in. Cheering and clapping and even some dancing. For a brief while it all felt like a micro- Woodstock festival.

Later in the summer when the album test-pressing arrived, I was honored to be interviewed by WCOL FM’s Terry Wilson, a great friend to Owl Recording Studios. Along with the interview, he played the album for one of his popular “Home Grown In the Studio” programs. Hearing that night-time radio broadcast was humbling, and filled me with a gratitude that still stirs in me even after all these years. I had joined a very special family of artists.

    And so to this day I remain grateful for the blessing of working with superior musicians - all gifted creators and arrangers in their own right. I still treasure the remarkable technical skills they poured into the music, as well as our camaraderie. Far more than simply backup players, they were true partners and collaborators who  generously articulated the spirit of the songs. Happy the man indeed. 

There’s plenty of additional background here for those of you interested in opening these hyperlinks, starting with some history of Owl Recording Studios:

http://buckeyebeat.com/owlrecords.html

Then, a YouTube recording of all the songs here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQ_0pMACuYI&list=OLAK5uy_lJYOQW0s4Tb-Z-q054Edx_pVQ4ZGsYl2U&index=2

But wait, there’s more! Here’s the fascinating history and info about Gotta Groove Records, including an excellent YouTube video on the Cleveland pressing plant and the process of making vinyl records:

https://www.gottagrooverecords.com/ 

 

And vinylly, got a turntable? if you wish to order an album directly from Gotta Groove Record Store, you can purchase at this site:

https://www.gottagroovestore.com/product/tom-wachunas-spare-changes/