Silver Sounds: Egan's Advent Day #1
Featuring a return to live shows(!) and a Christmas song I recorded in Ecuador in 2002
Ho Ho Ho, friendly readers & listeners. It’s Egan Caufield and I’m back with some spice for your holiday punch. Writing this Substack has been one of the joys of my musical 2023. I’ve had a blast using it as a way to share some of my old & unreleased Egan Caufield tunes, to dig into my songwriting process, my archive and inspirations. But it’s also true that 2023 has been a quiet year, one of writing and introspection, and not much playing!
So as we entered the holiday season, I wanted to do something a little special to get back in your ears. Which is why I’m excited to announce my 12 Days of Christmas/advent calendar mash-up. (Yes, yes, I know historically the 12 days came after Christmas, and there are 13 days, and so on and so forth. But roll with me here…)
Every day between now and December 24th, I’ll be giving you something music-related. What will it be? That’s the surprise. The FIRST gift is right here in this Substack — a deep cut Christmas song from my personal archive — so just keep reading to find it. I’ve got loads of other goodies to come, including my first LIVE SHOWS in ages (?!?!)—see below to RSVP.
There are two ways to follow along. I’ll be unveiling the daily gift on Instagram, so make sure you’re following me there, and I’ll also be sending out short Substack newsletters for each of the releases. So make sure to hit the subscribe button below. (All advent posts/goodies are free — but if you want to be on the rolls for all the benefits that paid subscribers get in the future, I appreciate your support!)
Here’s your advent calendar to follow along:
Tues 12/12 — 🤗 This very substack newsletter! Featuring a special deep cut from the archive: a holiday song I recorded in Quito, Ecuador in 2002. Read on below to hear it!
Wed 12/13 — 🎁
Thurs 12/14 — 🎁
Fri 12/15 — 🎁 8pm LIVE ON BandCamp! UP FROM THE PERMAFROST. My first show in more than a year, debuting some new material. RSVP HERE!
Sat 12/16 — 🎁
Sun 12/17 — 🎁
Mon 12/18 — 🎁
Tues 12/19 — 🎁
Wed 12/20 — 🎁
Thurs 12/21 — 🎁
Fri 12/22 — 🎁 8pm LIVE on StageIt! EGAN'S WAVY WASSAIL. Building on the tradition I started in 2021 with my Boxing Day Bash, this will feature some of my favorite songs for the winter season, including Egan originals, covers, and a few holiday classics. Don't miss out! Buy Tickets here (show is pay what you can but you have to spend a few bucks on notes to use StageIt).
Sat 12/23 — 🎁
And now on to the advent goods. On the first day of Christmas, Egan Caufield gives to you…
Well, first a story:
The year was 2002 and I was a college student studying abroad in Quito, Ecuador, my first foray out in the wider world. It was a golden time on the equator. That semester—spent taking history classes at a local university, staying with an amazing host family, traveling around the country on weekends—was one of the most formative experiences of my life for many reasons. And one of them is that Quito is where I recorded my first ever songs as Egan Caufield.
I owe it all to a guitar and a boombox. You see, early on in my stay with my host family, I found an old folk guitar that no one else in the house played. And so when I had spare time, I would take the guitar to my room (or anywhere, really) and work on putting music to the lyrics I had been writing on endless bus rides across the city and country. And then upstairs, in my room, next to my bed was a 1990s Sony stereo, which—like all 1990s boomboxes—could record sound through the speakers. So at some point, I started recording what I was writing.
Eventually, what had started as something to pass the time turned into a a dedicated project. By the end of the semester, I had recorded a collection of 17 songs. Many are as awkward and cringey as you would expect from a 20 year-old aspiring songwriter. But it was my first album! I called it The Quito Sessions. And, to this day, it lives, mostly unheard, on this cassette tape:
(don’t worry I have a backup)
Someday—someday soon—I will tell the full story of The Quito Sessions and share those recordings.
For now, I want to share just one of the songs I recorded in Ecuador in November 2002, as time was winding down and my return to the U.S. was imminent. It was bittersweet. I was having the time of my young life, but I missed a lot of what was familiar to me. And as the holidays came into view, I pined (no pun intended) for the Christmas traditions and friends and family at home. The fact that my dad had passed away just over a year before made me especially nostalgic.
So, me being me (and increasingly, being Egan Caufield), I decided to put it all into a song. A Christmas song, it turns out, something I had never written. It’s called “This Christmas.”
Here’s a scan from the Bob Slate notebook I took everywhere with me those days, along with some of my rough-and-ready guitar notation.
I recorded the song just as I mentioned above, directly through the speakers of the stereo onto a blank Maxell cassette tape. Only—and here’s where you might begin to recognize the home recording bug that has followed me all these years—I had a crazy idea for how to create a second track. I brought *another* stereo boombox into the room, and set it up directly facing the other stereo. After putting a new blank tape into the first stereo and hitting record, I played the tape with the original song on the second boombox, and literally sat next to it, recording some guitar leads over the top. Then, at last, I recorded that version of the tape back on to The Quito Tapes master that I was building.
Now, 21 years later (!) for the first time, you can give it a listen:
Let’s face facts: that sound quality is brutal. As a result of all the “tracking” I had done, the song is absolutely bathed in decaying magnetic tape-hiss. And yet, as I listen to it all these years later, the song still—perhaps even because of the ambient noise—hits a sweet, nostalgic note. The wavering vocals, the tinny folk guitar—it all adds to an innocence that the song was sort of meant to capture in the first place.
So, as we kick off this 2023 holiday season, I can’t think of a better note to start the 12 days than to give this song its wings and send it off into the world.
(And if you hate it, just imagine it as I sometimes do, an iconoclastic answer to Wham’s “Last Christmas”.)
After all, this was just day 1! Tune in tomorrow for the next advent surprise and
find me
xo
ec