A few years back, Dan Gaffney and I started a project with local Rehoboth musician Xavier Alexander. Here’s how it happened… Xavier had been in and out of mental hospitals for the last few years, being involuntarily committed by his family, he began showing up at WGMD radio broadcasts with his guitar and singing songs that has written.

He eventually came on the radio on Dan’s morning show to be interviewed and to tell his story. A year or two later, we decided that I would produce an album for Xavier that included new interview segments, in a way to tell his story.

Though we never finished an entire album, 5 songs were recorded and about 26 minutes of interview audio were captured that spring day at WGMD studios in Rehoboth Beach. Shortly after these sessions were taped, Xavier found himself back in the hospital (after a brief stint of moving some of his possessions including his guitar to the radio station).

Though we haven’t worked with Xavier since, these following recording tell a powerful and haunting, beautiful and scary portrait of a tortured artist at work. I recently unearthed these recordings, and not knowing what to do with them, since the album project is not happening, I’ve decided to post them here and at a few other sites. Although I own these sound recordings, the songs are owned by Xavier and I would not in any way try to make anything from them. I just want you to hear them. Therefore, I’ve uploaded these songs to playlist.com and below you can listen to the complete session the way we envisioned it that day.

Here’s the link to the Playlist.com playlist…

http://www.playlist.com/standalone/34398795

Here’s the direct URLs to the MP3s –

“Backwards Dreams: The Music and Words of Xavier Alexander”
By: Xavier Alexander

Words and Music written by Xavier Alexander
Acoustic Guitar and Vocals by Xavier Alexander
Interview by Dan Gaffney
Recorded and Produced by Jared Morris
Concept: Dan Gaffney/Jared Morris
Recorded at WGMD Studios in Rehoboth Beach, DE 2005

1. Backwards Dream
2. About Backwards Dream
3. About Mother Earth
4. Mother Earth
5. About Cover Your Smiles
6. Cover Your Smiles
7. About Keep Chasing Pretty Face
8. Keep Chasing Pretty Face
9. About On The Right Track
10. On The Right Track
11. About Xavier Alexander

This entry was posted on Friday, May 16th, 2008 at 6:38 pm and is filed under Art, Entertainment, Health, Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.