When the clock struck 12 to ring in the year 2019, I was playing an acoustic gig in Smithton, PA. I hardly had time to ponder the idea of it being a new year, much less realize that it's been 25 years since I wrote and produced "The Fountain of Youth" as my first full-length recording....well, almost...but more on that later.

Two weeks into the year, I was visiting a friend at his new house meeting his new baby. At one point we were checking out the basement and I just happened to remember that he had the only copy of that Jream CD from yesteryear somewhere in the plethora of his storage boxes.

See, we had transferred the original tapes to a CD way back on his "Cool Edit 97" program and he had misplaced the disc for many years. Since moving 3 years ago, he had a lot of that stuff still packed away.

He said, "Wow. If I had it at all, it would be in one of these boxes."

We talked a bit more, then he opened the top box and asked, "Was that called 'The Fountain of Youth'?"

I said, "You're kidding!".

He was not. The CD in question was sitting right on top of the pile. Weird.

I took it home, burned MULTIPLE copies and played it. Out came the past exactly as it was preserved and I slowly realized that what I was listening to was 25 years old this year. Fate? Maybe. But this music was already old before it was ever released. Allow me to elaborate:

I wrote "The Fountain of Youth" as a concept album, inspired by the music I enjoyed in my formative years. The writing and playing was heavily influenced by my former eighties guitar heroes.

Yeah, I was late to the party and just when I learned my guitar skills, they became obsolete. It took me a while to find the right singer/band to do these songs. By the time I did, it was too late. The scene had changed...literally, overnight. To sound like this in 1994 was the kiss of death (no Dokken pun intended). So I shelved all these songs and eventually formed Crushing Ground.

Back to the recording...

We rented a Yamaha 8-track portable studio for a month to record a 10 song demo tape. Halfway through, we realized there wasn't enough time to do it all, so we concentrated on the songs we knew best...and one I had just written since it was fresh.

I figured we would come back and add in all the songs at some point. But our singer moved to Georgia and grunge reared it's ugly head. The writing was on the wall. Jream was over.

When I built my own professional studio in 2006, I thought of rerecording the album properly with all the original tracks included. But the novelty of hearing these songs exactly as we left them so many years ago means more to me. They represent a time and place "So many dreams away"...just as it should be.

With the numerous outlets of eighties streaming channels out there now, this stuff is in flavor again. For some it never left. I have moved well beyond my fret-burning beginnings, but really enjoy listening back to this stuff many years removed.

In honor of the anniversary, I remastered all the tracks and cleaned up the stops and tape issues where I could, but purposely left the songs the way they were originally recorded in 1994.

Album Notes:

"The Fountain of Youth" is the entire life of a human being. It begins with a birth and ends with a death. It's a story of a boy who grows up looking for a magical place his grandfather used to talk about in bedtime stories. As he grows through hardships, falls in love and has kids of his own, then finally grandchildren, he understands what his grandfather meant. It's not a fictitious place at all, but something inside of you that you pass on to "Everyone you knew". He dies at the end of the disc with his family around him telling him there's "Nothing to fear". You flip the record (or tape at the time) and it's a new cycle of life with a new baby being born and the process continues over and over.