In 1983, I teamed up with drummer JACK REINER and bassist MICHAEL WEINSTEIN to record demos. My wife SUSIE FOOT had taken a hiatus from engineering, and got a job at the SPCA working with animals. With our son PJ at school all day long, I had my days free, so i put together a bare-bones studio based on a Teac 344s ¼" 4 track machine. I would record a live stereo mix of bass, drums and guitar, then I overdubbed vocals, lead guitar, keyboards and whatever to the other 2 tracks. Lead guitar was usually recorded on the lead vocal track, and many times a track would be recorded on one of the overdub tracks, then bounced along with another part (harmony, etc.) to the 2nd track. Then, the 1st track would be recorded over.

     I had been attending CITY COLLEGE of SAN FRANCISCO during the previous 2 years. One of my instructors for piano, music theory, and sight-singing was ZIGGY ISHAM, mother of the famous trumpet player and film composer MARK ISHAM. She was a great teacher, and I received my first real formal musical training. As I had already been playing for over 15 years, and already had a lot of writing experience, this training filled in many gaps in my overall concept of music theory, and I  went back over the songs I had written over the years to re-understand them theoretically.

     I produced about 30 songs with Jack and Mike in that studio

on Myra Way in San Francisco in 1983. These recordings reflect the evolution of my production skill set and my musical development at that time. A number of the songs written during this period have had new lives on consequent JIMMY FOOT albums.