So that’s a song that I wrote a loooooong time ago as you may have read.
It was on a really cheap clear Maxell cassette tape that eventually just fell apart.
I recorded it with Kevin Beck and keyboards and neon guitar upstairs in THE GILSON in around 1994. It’s been lost to the sands of time for decades. A couple of years ago Kevin found a box of4-track tapes. (We were using an old Fostex 4-track that he owned.) He no longer owned that 4-track tape player, so when he found that box in 2025, I looked on Facebook marketplace and drove an hour and a half to meet some guy at a CVS parking lot. He had a brand new, in the box, with the Styrofoam, Fostex 4-track machine just like we used back in 1994. 300 bucks.
I brought it back and I gave it to Kevin for his birthday Which was that week.
The only caveat was he had to go through all the tapes and find JAMAICAN COFFEE.
It’s all I wanted in return.
He never did. I resigned myself to the reality that I would never hear the song again.
I had memories of it and I could probably have pulled it off, but I really loved the arrangement and the feel of two guys in their early 20s doing their best Fagan and Becker impersonation with a drum machine. I just wanted the inspiration to hear myself trying my hardest to impress my heroes.
On May 27, 2026, Kevin texted my phone early in the morning.
“I don’t wanna get your hopes up… But I found a box in the basement“
I told him I was at work, but my phone would be on and waiting. I optimistically went about my day. Around seven that night, in the middle of the busiest part of the rush, of course, Kevin FaceTimed my phone.
I was locked in battle conditions, so I looked at it and was like
“what the fuck?“ and I clicked off.
Then I realized……………. “holy shit Kev NEVER FaceTimes, and he NEVER calls or texts me when he knows I’m busy as shit at work.”
I told everybody I would be right back and I ran outside with my phone.
When he picked up, all he said was “I found it”.
I told him “OK. You know what to do. I’m leaving here in a half hour or so make sure it’s in my inbox, please.“
He said he would try, I said “my life is in your hands, dude“
He protested once more and I said “my life is in your hands, dude“
Well, he got me a file and I heard it six times on the drive home. I was in heaven and I truly hadn’t experienced that kind of joy for a long time.
However:
When I got home, 32 years of waiting to record this song with a full band was obviously crammed inside my manhood. Instead of taking a shower, I went straight to my laptop and started working. I downloaded SUNO, an AI platform, and inserted the demo track. I intended on cleaning up the tape hiss, separating the guitars, vocals, keyboard and drum stems, and EQing them all in order to get the just-found demo to sound as good as I could. As I had just downloaded this program just 10 minutes earlier, I did not know what I was doing. Instead of hitting separate, which I thought I had already done (because it had played me a preview of just the guitar, just the vocal, just the keyboard, etc.) I wanted to download it in separate stems to my computer so that I could put it into REAPER MIXING SOFTWARE and mix it. So I hit the go button.
In one minute, (truly one minute), (and in hindsight, FRIGHTENINGLY, in just one minute) I had a file in my download folder. I instantly opened the folder and sent the email to Kevin, whom I happened to be talking to on the phone while I did all of this mind you.
“I just sent you the stems” I told him.
Then I opened the file, there was not four separate stems.
There was only one track.
So I clicked on it
I was shocked to find out that SUNO had RECREATED the whole track. It had changed the words, it had changed the vocalist, it had CHANGED. The guitar had changed, the bass, the keyboard, the synth, it had added horns. It had also created the perfect drum track. I heard Kevin whisper “what the fuck”, and I said “Kev what the fuck.”
I was, of course, a little disappointed, and then…… Kevin and I both went
“holy shit.”
Next thing you know, I’m up until 3 AM.
I separate the stems from that regenerated demo and threw away everything but the drums synths and horns.
I now had a perfect drum track, absolutely brilliant and energetic and happy and with the sense of understanding of the genre I was aiming for. SUNO had heard the demo that Kevin and I had made, and realized we were aiming straight for STEELY DAN.
I started recording tracks the next day. I called Frank for the bass part, Peter for the keyboard part, and did the vocals and guitar on two successive Thursdays, my only days off. I was mixing as I went, and Frank‘s bass part came in first, and I mixed it for two days. Peter‘s Fender Rhodes keyboard part was the dealbreaker for me. It had to have Fender Rhodes keyboard to make it sound like Fagen.
I’m pretty positive that worked out well.
I focused grouped it with a whole bunch of engineers and musicians that I know online and in real life. They all said it was ready for mastering as soon as I got Peter’s keyboard part in there. So I did it.
I went with LANDR for the last song I did. It was 30 bucks a year, and they did distribution, but they obviously didn’t have much pull in the industry. Plus, they didn’t have jukebox rights. Muzak rights. I went with DistroKid this time, and for $90 yearly plus a $10 fee for movie and television distribution, so for 100 bucks, this shit was easy. Not only that, but they’ve been sending me promotional materials to pass along every single day. Every one of them may be AI generated, but they’re right on the money for the genre I was looking for. That video on YouTube is something they suggested. They’ve been right about everything so far and have been so good for just $100, I decided OK fine. You know I’m not happy about any of the video, really, (except for the redhead with the glasses and the overalls). I would prefer to have a bit of performance video in there….but, the 12-year-old Me from 1981 who saw the NEW FRONTIER video on MTV never saw Donald Fagen in that video, so I guess I’m following suit?
This promotional crap is for the birds though, and I’ve just been “hurry up and waiting” to get this over with so I can start on the next hundred or so songs I have in the chamber. Now that I am with DistroKid, I can release up to six songs a year with the current subscription rate I am under.
That sounds about right.
JAMAICAN COFFEE took me about one month.
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