John Gawkowski

May 14, 2009
Just a quick update. It has been so cool to have so many people find this site and listen to these songs. Especially the incredible number of friends, family and even outright strangers who have sent me an email letting me know that they have downloaded and listened to my songs and have put them on their iPods, etc. Very Cool. What a trip!!!

I continue to work on my album. Honestly, this has become less of a project for me and more of a personal journey now. It is coming along - albeit slowly. I am learning so much and I am becoming more humble with each step in the process. We have about 3 more songs to do and then there are endless touch ups, mixing, mastering steps, etc. We are shooting for the album to be finished in the fall. The album will have mostly new songs with at most one or two of the songs below being included, and even those will be redone to a large extent.




Available Fall 2009 on iTunes and CD Baby


Sad Lisa - Video
Well, after several months of fun (uh - i mean hard work), we finally completed a little video for one of the songs from the album, a song called "Sad Lisa."

Sad Lisa appeared on side one of the 1970's album, "Tea for the Tillerman" by Cat Stevens.  As the title implies, this is indeed a sad song, but at the same time, I think a very beautiful one. To me, the song is about wanting to help someone you care about who is deeply troubled, and ultimately understanding that you can't help.

The haunting arrangement was done by Patrick Feehan who plays the keyboards on the song. It also features Kris Yenney on Cello. I'm personally pleased with the vocals on this, mostly because of the level of emotion that we were able to capture. As part of recording this, I learned that a great arrangement can inspire and guide the right vocal performance.

The video was filmed, directed and created by a young filmmaker from Oakland named Ben Flanigan. We thought it would be cool to try and capture a little bit of the recording studio experience for this song. We had a lot of fun on a Friday evening getting everyone together and making this in the studio. It was filmed in Studio A of The Annex in Menlo Park. If you are interested, I have posted some behind the scenes photos and details about the process of making this video. You can click here.

For best results please listen to the soundtrack with your earphones not your tiny computer speakers ;-)

May 10, 2008
Being a totally amateur musician, but a professional "lover of music,"  I decided to embark upon a personal project of recording an album of cover songs. I wanted to select a few of the songs that had meant an awful lot to me back when I was learning how to play guitar and record them as a gift to my family and my friends, especially for those folks who so many years ago, had endured countless hours sitting in cheesey bars dutifully telling me "you sound really good tonight john!!"  The project would also give me a chance as an amateur, to work with some amazing professional musicians and to learn so much about the process, technology and especially the art of making records.

So, I created this page simply as a way to share some of my songs with my friends and family. I also hope that this might be a way to reach out to some of the people I've lost touch with and maybe reconnect.

I continue to update the song list below as I work through my little project. If you do happen to come across this and take a quick listen or download any of them, please let me know what you think. 

All the best,

John Gawkowski
Redwood Shores, Ca.