A bit of history, for those who don't know:

Les Paul wasn't just some dumb country hick who sang songs with Mary Ford. He was a super genius who, as anybody in the record industry will tell ya, revolutionalized recording techniques.

He invented a guitar that is used widely in every musical genre from Rock to Jazz, named it after himself and sold the design to Gibson. He invented the harmonica holder that Bob Dylan made famous.

He also invented a very insignificant little technique called MULTITRACK recording!!!

If it wasn't for Les Paul, who knows where the music business would be now. But before he invented said multitracking, he had to go through the "Sound on Sound" technique first.

Here's the drill: You need two tape recorders, but they MUST be able to record a microphone signal over top of a Line In signal.

Simply put, without getting overly technical, you record a performance "live" (meaning all at once) then run the signal of that tape recorders output into a second tape recorder and after plugging a set of stereo mics into that and balancing the mic & line signal, record the two signals together on the second recorder. You could continue to go back and forth in tandem, but being this was analog, you built up tape hiss with every generation, so the passes were limited.

So, what's this have to do with Yours Truly? This is how I started. And I didn't even realize that Les did it first!! After writing "Carolyn" and one or two other basic "one voice, one instrument" songs, I bought a stereo cassette recorder AND a stereo two track reel to reel tape recorder and used them in the above mentioned way to do things like vocal harmony. I even got my Buffett clarinet into the act, using it as a second instrument to play sustained notes (like that of a violin or cello). It worked. In fact, many liked the sound as if I had developed my own style. But it was frustrating in that if you made a mistake you had to start all over again (and I made alot of mistakes).

The "My own style" thing got old quick. I wanted to rock! I wanted to write drum parts and bass parts, but it would be awhile untill I graduated to that level. I had alot of folk songs to write.