For years I’ve been encouraging Eric Wallen (the heart and soul of Minor Stars and My Dear Ella) to let the world have a listen to his impressive collection of song idea tapes and demo recordings. We’ve been talking about creating an online “vault” of demos and bonus material for so many years that Jack White had time to telepathically steal our ideas and launch his own version.
Well, the time has come and the Minor Stars Vault has been unlocked and launched into cyberspace at long last. Here’s Eric’s announcement and the first two offerings:
The Vault will put on full display the underbelly of Minor Stars and its members. Demos, riffs and jamz from practice, live videos, old abandoned songs, rough mixes of the latest song we’re working on…the stuff that might not otherwise see the light of day but that is often the most interesting and exciting. Anything goes.
Our goal is to add a new Vault post every week. In addition to offering up cool content, the Vault is meant to keep us focused and dedicated to writing and recording music regularly, and to loosen up the stranglehold that I’ve (Eric) always had on material I haven’t considered to be in its “final” form. I’m dropping all that. It’s never gonna be in its final form, or it already is and I don’t know it yet. But it really doesn’t matter, and now it’ll be in the Vault for all to hear.
I’ve been chipping away at digitizing my song idea tapes. A daunting task, considering I’ve got damn near a hundred of ‘em. I’m enjoying it, though, as I get to relive the moments of creative epiphany (and sometimes pure insanity) I’ve captured on tape over the years. It would take at least ten years—with no day job—to go back and develop all the song ideas into full-fledged, high-quality recordings. I realize this will never happen. I’m fine with it, though, because 1) Many of the ideas suck; 2) Some of them are too precious to change at all; and 3) I’m constantly coming up with NEW ideas that demand time and attention, so I can only return to the stuff on the old tapes that I find particularly compelling.