A quick note: Most of the Barn was created in 1998 - 2000, and the majority of the older covers and band photos were stored on a site that I can no longer access. My copies all died with a hard-drive crash in January 2006. Until I can either recover them (which is doubtful) or rescan them (long, tedious and something I don't have time for these days) you're gonna get a lot of broken images. Sorry.

Everything here is an independently released album or demo of some kind that I own for various reasons. I knew a few local bands when I was a teen in Michigan, and was a DJ in college before moving to California. While taking courses as a studio engineer in Long Beach, I recorded several bands, and played in a few others. With my own home studio, I've continued recording, while booking shows and doing live sound with a couple bands. In the process, I've met many others, adding some of them to shows I've booked.

I've provided as much detailed information as I've found time to do, and more is slowly added all the time. I've scanned covers and band photos, several song titles have links to lyrics, and sound files have been put in sparsely (I did small .wav files of short clips at one point, then later I put up several Real Audio files, then eventually started putting up MP3s). Also, any band that has online information I've put in links to their sites, and often directly link their lyric and sound files. I've spent years building this, with some files stored on now defunct sites, so although I've tried to keep things updated, dead links may still exist.

After each demo I give my own review. Some of these are detailed, but most are brief. I always try to cover what style of music it is, and if I think it's any good, as well as rate the quality of the recording itself. My opinions are highly subjective and vary even relative to each other, since these have been written over several years with different states of mind, so don't take them too seriously unless it's extreme in one direction or the other. Read some of my personal favorites here, here and here.

Of course, the original point of all this was to make copies available to anyone interested, but I work a lot more these days (I manage a restaurant) and have teenage kids, so I'm a lot more selective in the requests, or at least don't get around to them much, as they are lower in my priorities than a lot of other things that aren't getting done around here (my garage is an ever increasing uncleanable war zone). I'm always excited to get Email with questions and comments, and I will always eventually respond. I've enjoyed lots of interaction with this page over the years.

I've grouped and regrouped these differently a few times, but the diversity of musical genres as well as how or when I obtained them makes this difficult, so just wade through and make discoveries. I won't deny that some of these bands aren't very good (after all, only some got signed, but anybody can make a demo) but some real gems are buried in here.

Michigan (14 demos)
California (LBCC days, 38 demos)
California (StoneBlue days, 28 demos)
California (Surf City days, 25 demos and growing)

KEY
LP: vinyl record -- CS: cassette tape -- CD: compact disc
(l): song lyrics -- (a): audio files -- (p): band photos
* available by external link