“Before Beginning: The Unreleased I Know-Nashville, 1985” features never-before-heard studio versions of material that would later appear on Gorka’s Red House debut “I Know.”

 

Only 25 at the time of these recordings, Gorka had traveled to Nashville to record with producer Jim Rooney at Cowboy Jack Clement’s studio. The sessions featured a full band and vocals from fellow artists Lucy Kaplansky and Shawn Colvin, also members of the NYC “Fast Folk” scene.

 

The recordings were done with a full band in one room over five days. After the sessions, Gorka decided to go a different direction and the tapes were never released. The original multitrack tapes went from Nashville to Easton to New York City to Bethlehem, on to Ann Arbor and finally arrived at Gorka’s home in Minnesota a few years ago. In the fall of 2014, he took them out of storage to see if they would still play. 

 

“I brought them to Rob Genadek at The Brewhouse Recording Studio in Minneapolis to listen and we enjoyed what we heard,” he said. I thought that others might, too. Genadek “baked” the tapes with a hair dryer so that magnetic particles would not flake off and they were able to transfer the analog tapes to the digital world.   

 

Now, over three decades later, “Before Beginning: The Unreleased I Know-Nashville, 1985” is a document of the road not taken, an alternate musical direction the now well-known singer/songwriter chose to forego.

 

Tickets are $28.

 

FMI: Call 207-582-7144 or go online to www.johnsonhall.org/event/john-gorka-0.