I can't believe this was recorded 25 years ago. Yes, time flies but actually as I listened to this for the first time in 25 years it sounds much older, like a Buddy Holly house demo or something. I had totally forgotten I had recorded this but recently a very good guy, Will Spears sent it to me and the memories of this time came flooding back.

I had recently moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina after befriending Jeff Hart (Jeff Hart and the Ruins, The Hanks, Brown Mountain Lights and currently Secret Monkey Weekend a band everyone should check out). Earlier that year I had been working at a production company in Chicago that shot the photos for Spiegel Catalog and some JC Penny catalog photos as well. I was the assistant merchandise coordinator, so my job was to receive the merchandise that the photographers were going to shoot and my office was in the basement with the various merchandise they took the photos of. We did a lot of electronics, including cassette tape players and the cassettes themselves, a golden opportunity for someone dubbing demos to be honest. I spent the majority of my days dubbing my cheap 4 track demo of some of these songs and a better sounding demo my brother Robert and I recorded with the late, great Jerry Soto in Chicago, sending them to any record label address I could find (thank you Big Takeover magazine for providing tons of record label addresses and a special thank you to Jack Rabid who answered a letter and demo I had sent him giving me some very good advice). I probably sent 200 tapes (this production company had a postage meter) and got 2 responses, one was from Minty Fresh Records in Chicago who were nice but passed and a label called Bombay Records in Raleigh, North Carolina run by Jeff Hart. Jeff called me and said he loved my demo but Bombay was essentially the label he put his music out on and really didn't have the money to release anything else, but he was more than happy to help me and see what he could do in North Carolina.

Meanwhile the demo I had recorded with Rob had landed in the hands of Parasol Records who called me and offered me a recording contract! The problem was I didn't have a band to record the album...

Jeff and I struck up a friendship, calling each other regularly and eventually I planned to visit him in North Carolina, which I did the week of St. Patrick's Day 1997. I fell in love with North Carolina and met a bunch of great people, Mike Nicholson, Joe Caparo and Tony Stiglitz among them and I decided to move to North Carolina which I did on October 19th 1997. Mike was nice enough to allow me to stay with him when I got there and he and his family were so nice to accommodate me. Mike and Jeff both were friends with Mitch Easter (Let's Active, recorded R.E.M. Pylon), in fact Mike and Ronald Tucker, who recorded the last two songs on this demo at his studio in Greensboro Flying Hippo, that ended up being the rough tracks for those songs on the Motel Swim LP; had recorded with Mitch when they were in The Village Pistols, a legendary Killed By Death band whose song Big Money was later recorded by punk supergroup Teenage Time Killers, with Lee Ving and Dave Grohl (so fucking cool). I hope they got paid!

Both the songs Motel Swim, and Down Tiger, Down Tiger (yes I know now that there aren't tigers in Africa, but when I was 24 I was dumb), were recorded with Ronald and then we overdubbed various other instruments with Chris Stamey (The dBs, Alex Chilton, and his amazing solo work, he also recorded Pylon) at his home studio in Chapel Hill.

This demo was recorded at Tony's house and was essentially every song I had written for the album, just me and an acoustic guitar and yes my voice was that high back then. I was 24. I hope you enjoy this.

The innocence is real.

Jonathan Scott