Howard’s Music

1970 Family Reunion

The highlight of our 1970 Family Reunion, at Pat’s house in Vinton, LA, was the anticipation of John Howard’s arrival. He had been out in California for years. Once he arrived, we all gathered around as he entertained us with his wonderful music.

2024 Memories from the "Darling Children"

I remember that reunion, at age 2.5! His music was like magic. He sang "puff the Magic Dragon". And someone brought a bushel of crabs, I asked my Mom if I could pet them (I am sure she was glad I asked first!).

1970 Demo Album

After Mom passed away in 2008, I was part of the crew that helped finalize her home. As you are aware, that is why I ended up digitizing a great many of the old family photos in her trunk.

Deep inside her trunk was an old letter that John Howard had written her back in December 1970. A great deal of the letter was his description of six songs he had recorded on a demo album.

NOTE: On my Vimeo account, I have stored one ‘video’ (the ‘video’ is the audio with one still photo) of each of his songs. You should be able to download from there if you want your own copy.

extracted from Howard’s dec, 18, 1970 letter to “dear mom and dad” (all lower case as he typed it)

. . . about the six songs on the disk. i feel good about them because they express as best i know how, the things i was experiencing at the time they were written as well as a few personal opinions i’ve developed.

let the morning come has a totally fictitious story line and for the most part is a statement i made for a reference point when i get too deeply engrossed in negativity. otha (my partner in crime…side musician…whatever) occasionally asks me how andre’s getting along when he notices me wallowing around in some fantasized forlorn state. a very effective question.

long way back to california was written for zena in the course of an intensely “pensive-mood-after-noon” when i was visiting at pats house last summer. all of the love songs ive written has been to zena.

where is this place called home kindda sums up a recurring rootless feeling that i entertain. i especially like this one. the recording engineer categorized it as “baroque folk”. thats me playing twelve string and otha on bass. its the only take that we didnt over-dub embellishments on. the rest are actually sound on sound, like playing two tapes at once and recording it all on one tape. cept its not as tricky as that definition indicates. what we did was listen to the first take on earphones and play along with our selves. the first take was balanced on two tracks with my voice on half of each one and the instruments on either side. then the overdub kinda went on top of it all. otha is an extremely sensitive musician and can intuitively illuminate the essence of a poem. i hope that we can work together a long time.

your misty eyes is lyrically the most complete song i think ive ever written. i knew what i wanted to say when i wrote it and how to say it just happened. musically, it is by far the most complex. there are five time signature changes in it that make for difficult execution of a smooth sound. after five takes i settled for the third which is far from correct. i think i was ready to tackle it towards the end of the session but we had already clocked up a fortune by that time and i just couldnt ask for more.

tribute to trash creek is my only protest or topical composition. i approached a controversial subject…polution…after realizing i wasnt expessing any of my complaints about the madness around me in my music. i stole the expression trash creek from gordon baxter. i think its a vivid and descriptive term. hope he dont mind.

debra and i do was a quick improvisional song that i wrote partially at caritas house last summer (i think she might have the first few lines on tape) and finished during a lunch break in los angeles on the way home. the purpose of this tape was to put down six songs of mine that most accurately represents my styles of writing and we decided against a song called you’re a dreamer too because it was too mellow. debra and i do seemed like the answer. it was recorded last and only one take on each track. otha and i had never played it together before and it had been a while since id sung it myself. i even forgot the words on the third verse and only got “cool” in there instead of “i played it cool”.