At Your Door (1984) - Origins

There's an interesting story behind the recording of my original demo for At Your Door. In fact, the song dates back to my freshman year in college, and as far as I know, is the first original song that I wrote. Maybe there was something else that came before it, but if so, it wasn't recorded and has long since been forgotten!

But, back to At Your Door. This 'demo' is just me and my acoustic guitar, in my dorm room at college. I had a cassette boom box with external microphone inputs, so I setup a couple of cheap-o mics and set out to record my new song.

Well after just a few seconds on the first attempt, the phone rings and ruins the take! Oh well, try again.

So I stop the tape, and get ready to record the song again. This time my dorm room phone is unplugged! Now, here's where the story gets pretty interesting. Bear with me. So, the 2nd verse goes like this:

I see the train coming down the tracks
I turn around but it don't come back

Well, as I sing that first line, a diesel train horn can be faintly heard in the background, as if on queue. The interesting thing about that, other than the fact that it happened at all (!!) is that it would not have happened that way if my first attempt to record the song hadn't been interrupted by the phone! Now the diesel horn is pretty faint in the background, but it's definitely there.

Check it out:

https://thirdbowl.bandcamp.com/track/at-your-door-1984