Almost Lost

Song story & origins

Introduction

I devote a fair share of my work to purely instrumental music—roughly a third of my catalog—and I’ve been fortunate to score several documentary films alongside making a number of all-instrumental albums. This chapter gathers three such pieces, each with its own path: the opening theme from a 2011 Crazy Horse documentary, an early multi-track guitar exploration titled “Eight Pound Test” from 2001, and a field-recorded acoustic improvisation, “Almost Lost,” from 2017. Together they trace how instruments alone can carry story and feeling—no lyrics required.

The final tune, “Almost Lost,” opens my 2017 album Two Weeks in April, a collection of improvised instrumental pieces performed over, quite literally, two weeks. I set myself a simple rule: take an instrument (this one is steel-string acoustic guitar), go to different locations around our place—some outside, some inside—and improvise. I recorded on an iPad, then remixed and mastered on my Mac. It was a field-recording experiment: what kind of intimacy and presence could I capture quickly, without fuss? On several tracks you can hear ambient sounds—birds, even a motorcycle threading the canyon—because I wanted life to leak into the music. (Not on this one; I recorded “Almost Lost” indoors.)

The title story is the point. I tracked it early, then set it aside, convinced it wasn’t a keeper. After finishing nearly everything else, I circled back, pressed play, and heard it fresh. No—this one mattered. I moved it to track one and named it “Almost Lost.” The lesson was simple and needed: sometimes we write off a piece too quickly; sometimes the quiet thing we nearly discard is the one that shines.

Why these three stay with me

Each of these instrumentals taught me something craft can’t teach alone. The opening theme reminded me to play with integrity and respect inside someone else’s story. “Eight Pound Test” taught me how layering and patience can turn small figures into a living landscape. “Almost Lost” taught me to listen again before I let something go. No lyrics, and still the instruments say exactly what needed saying.

Source: New Music Memoir (1).docx