Monti Amundson & The Blubinos - Unglued (1995)

In the late 80's and well into the 90's Dan Sause ran a business called "Locals Only" in Portland, Oregon that sold CDs and records by local musicians. I used to hang out there and talk shop. One day Dan says to me "Monti, what would it take for you to record an 'Unplugged' CD?" I thought about it for a minute and said "I don't know, $1500 or so." Dan wrote me out a check and I booked two days at Gung Ho, a recording studio in Eugene, Oregon. All the tracks were recorded live, including vocals. It was the smoothest recording session ever, where every track seemed effortless in it's execution. Trust me - that doesn't happen very often.

There wasn't much going on in P-town at that time so I moved to Los Angeles to see if I could shake things up a little. I've always been out of step with the L.A. shuffle. What's a no-nonsense guy doing in a place like L.A. anyway? Trying to get a record deal, that's what. But after a year of rejection letters and hangovers, I moved back to Portland. I got some money together and recorded a couple more acoustic tracks and made "Unglued" a stronger album. I hadn't initially wanted to shop this record in Europe because I didn't think it would fly over there. Fortunately I am a much better guitar player than I am a psychic because the newly renamed album was a hit in Europe.