John Fizer - Treasure Man (2023)

Barely saved from obscurity by a series of chance events The never before heard album by John "Treasure Man" Fizer recorded in 1977 and presumed lost.

John Fizer has been "living rough" for the last 30 years couch surfing, sleeping in play structures, friends backyards and more recently his old volvo station wagon. John is currently residing in a nursing facility in Northern California. Below is the story of how this beautiful country folk album came about.

"I used to walk my daughter to school and passed the original Peet’s coffee every day. Across the street was Berkeley’s beloved John “Treasure Man” Fizer playing chess, doing crosswords and waiting next to the treasure tree which he had filled with gemstones and various magical trinkets. To this day any child passing by is welcome to choose a treasure. John is beloved by our community.

Over many stops with my daughter I got to know John, a fountain of love, intelligence and humor and as quirky and feisty as can be. We became friends. Eventually he showed me a few old cassettes of cassettes of cassettes in poor condition of him performing and asked if I could make them sound better. I agreed to take a listen.

Such amazing songs!

So I proceeded to remaster the cassettes while continuing to ask John at least 4 times over several months if he had the original master studio recordings. The answer was always no.

About the time I finally had his cassette sourced recordings sounding as good as they could be and he popped up with a 15 inches per second 1/4’ half track, state of the art analog master reel to reel recorded at the legendary Mountain Ears recording studio in 1977 with some very fine studio musicians including Ray Bonneville, Brad "Honeyboy" Hayes, Erik "Bobo" Johnson and Brian "Sluggo" Brown.

It had been residing for decades in the bowels of John’s old 1980 Volvo station wagon, which also serves as his home, and was covered in strangely beautiful mold but that was the day I knew the world would hear John’s music the way it was meant to be be.. big, fat, analog. The next few years were spent cleaning and remastering the album with some of the worlds finest restoration specialists. All John has ever really wanted in life, beside making a lot of children happy, is for his songs to be released on vinyl." - James Johnson