About

Originally, SlowBurn Records was just an idea.  I had a four-track recorder, a microphone and headphones, an electric guitar and amp and I just realized that I could write, record and mix my own albums (onto cassette, of course).   This realization was a watershed moment – I truly could not believe that I didn’t think of it before.  I had already started writing and recording songs, but the idea that I could create a series of songs that could last for 45 minutes was just like making my own album – even if it was a pretend album.

To be more legit, I needed a few more things.  I bought a bass guitar and began to use the crusty old keyboard my parents bought me when I was in sixth grade – it had a drum machine.  I learned to put the microphone into a pillow and beat on it with a stick to create some sort of percussion effects.   I needed a couple of guitar effects for those unexpected sounds that you might encounter on a record.

And I needed a record label – because I wasn’t brave enough to put my own name on the cassettes.   And that was it.  I didn’t need anyone else, kind of like a painter who works alone rather than a musician who usually work in ensembles.  I could play all the parts on the four-track and try to sing a little and I got to decide how to do it.   I remember looking at the first cassette of mixed downs in my hand and I had this awesome feeling because I didn’t know anyone who was doing something like this.   It was like discovering new teritorry where none was thought to previously exist.  It was that excitement of creating something so complex and personal out of blank tape that would exist for 100 years that inspired me to continue – writing, playing and recording music.I still feel that excitment when I put all of the songs together and listen to it them all together for the first time.

After a couple of years of recording music alone and with friends, I got another idea.   I should actually create a label called SlowBurn Records to help organize this growing collection of tapes and CDs.   I settled with that name because of a song we had written called “Slow Burn Crow” – which we thought was funny.  The name stuck…not sure why.

For a while, I did have some ambitions of running this working record label that would license works to larger entities for distribution and I did just that for sometime.  But in the end, I am not in love with business nor do I have a particularly important message to get out to the kids.  This is simply what I have done and hope to do some more – its been fun.  SlowBurn Records is really an archive for work that I have created alone and with friends all of my adult life.  I hope you like it – its kept me going for years.  - Eric Johnson (April 2011)