Three albums released in the Fall of 2022 contain the majority of Jon’s archived demos and recordings up to the year 2015. These are mostly home demos, some transferred from 4 track cassette tapes but most are early digital home studio recordings. It’s a collection covering the greater part of two decades of attempts at cracking into the music business from different angles. Some songs were pitched to publishers as songs meant for other artists, some were promotional for Jon’s attempts at getting his own band off the ground, some were responses to industry prompts and songwriting contests. These recordings are contemporaries to Old Haunts, they are essentially B-sides, rarities, and demos leading up to the album Silver Streak (2016).
Tell Me a Tale is an acoustic collection which includes 2 tracks that are much more recent than any other in these demo collections and the audio was lifted directly from video entries in NPR’s Tiny Desk contests of 2019 (Honest Mistake) and 2020 (Tell Me a Tale). Honest Mistake had a day in the sun when it was featured in the All Songs Blog as Jon, under the moniker Gill T. performed this song in the desert outside Phoenix AZ and included a few rope spinning tricks he picked up growing up in Tucson. Although chronologically these two are outliers they fit well stylistically into the category of acoustic demos. Interestingly enough this collection also has the earliest recording “1997” an acoustic guitar instrumental solo which was named after the year it was recorded – 1997.
The remaining demos on Middle Child and Twin Sister are a grab-bag of odds and ends which are full arrangements, but rough enough to easily earn the “demo” label. There were enough tracks to fill 2 full size albums so the more random ones were relegated to “middle child” status and the more standard (slightly more refined?) alt-rock versions are bundled as Twin Sister although there was not a strict formula so these are loose classifications.
JGT Music 