Story

The New Olds

The New Olds is ten songs I wrote across my life. The oldest I wrote at 16. The newest I wrote at 55.

The number next to each song is how old I was when I wrote it. That's the idea of the record. These are new recordings of old songs, finished on my own terms. That's where the name comes from.

Some of these songs were played live for years and never recorded. Some were recorded and never finished. All of them waited a long time.

I made this record myself. I wrote it, played it, recorded it, mixed it, and mastered it. In the past, outside producers put their own sound on my songs. I've gotten to the point where I can do it all. But I wanted to do it in a way that honors the people I learned from.

This is how these songs got here, and the people who were there along the way.

Before Sasquatch

I have always made things. As a kid it was mostly art. I drew a lot. I built things. The people I liked most were the ones who made things too, and the ones who got up in front of people.

For as long as I can remember, I wanted to play guitar in front of people. I wanted it so much that I played a tennis racket with a camera strap on it. Then I built a guitar out of a cracker box, a baseball bat, and duct tape.

Music ran in my family. My grandmother played gospel on the organ and piano. My mother played piano. I was always drawn to music and to the people who made it. I wanted to be one of them.

I took piano lessons when I was eight. I didn't like them, and I didn't practice much. But I learned enough to understand the keyboard and a little music theory.

Writing songs came naturally. In elementary school and middle school, my friends and I made up jingles and little songs.

At 12, I got my first acoustic guitar. It took me about a year to get past the E chord. By 14, I knew enough to write basic little songs with a verse and a chorus.

I became a big fan of The Who when I was 12. Pete Townshend wrote the songs, and he played them on stage. That was the path I wanted. Write it, then perform it.

I also started playing trumpet at 12, and I played it until I was 18. By then I was drum major of an award-winning high school band, leading 185 musicians. We won contests. I learned a lot about classical music, jazz, theory, and what it takes to put on a big show.

Sasquatch

At 14, Thomas Caves and I started getting together after school at his house. I had an acoustic guitar. Thomas played piano. We messed around writing silly songs, and a few that were for real.

Then a friend gave me an electric guitar, and a terrible little amp showed up at Thomas's house. So did Mike Anderson, with drums. We learned three songs inside. You Really Got Me, the Kinks song or maybe the Van Halen one. I'm sure it was terrible. A pretty decent Pinball Wizard. And a riff version of Peter Gunn.

Then we moved out to his parents' porch to play for some friends. Thomas's parents lived in Hayes Barton, a nice, quiet part of Raleigh. That's when the police came and made us stop. But Sasquatch was formed.

Mike Curlee was a friend and a big supporter from the start. He almost became our first drummer, before Mike Anderson took the seat.

Richard Campbell joined us in high school and stayed in the band all the way to graduation. He and I did the singing.

David Moreland joined on bass. He didn't know how to play bass. He played clarinet in the high school band and was a friend of Thomas's. But he was a good musician and a real genius. He quickly became a little John Entwistle.

We played songs by bands we liked and could play. The Who. R.E.M. A little Rolling Stones. The Smithereens were a big favorite.

For the rest of high school, Sasquatch was the most popular band at Broughton High School. We played school events, parties, and dances. Twice we played for the whole school. We had T-shirts. We had jackets. People still bring it up with me today.

Broughton had rival bands. We were the band for The Who and R.E.M. We got a lot of practice playing in front of people.

Some of the songs on The New Olds go back to Sasquatch. I wrote Trees Are Green in algebra class, looking out the window at the green trees and the blue sky. Sasquatch played it.

Sasquatch ended when high school did. We all went off to different schools.

The 2nd

The band's hiatus didn't last long. A few months into freshman year, Mike, David Moreland, Thomas, and I got back together. We asked Charlie Kennedy to sing. We knew him from high school, but we got to know him well that first semester at State.

The 2nd formed in November 1988. It picked up where Sasquatch left off and went further. With Charlie singing, I could focus on guitar and on writing the songs. We had lots of time to practice and lots of energy.

We sounded like a heavier R.E.M. We also sounded a lot like The Who. We always have. It was a very musical band. Not Rush musical. Who musical. For a heavier comparison, think Foo Fighters, or Bob Mould and Sugar.

The band got popular in Raleigh, in Winston-Salem, and all around the area. Some weeks we played twice. We played fraternities and clubs. We got good spots at festivals. We opened for Hootie and the Blowfish a few times, and for The Romantics.

One night stands out. We opened for Hootie and the Blowfish at the New Deli in Greenville, around 1991 or 1992. There were hundreds and hundreds of people. It was packed and hot. We were only the opener, but the crowd loved us. We got a huge round of applause. Then Hootie came on, and it was a huge night.

Mostly I remember playing all the time. The big crowds. The feeling that anything was possible.

Four songs on The New Olds come from The 2nd: Gone Away, Without You I Would Die, Never Was, and After All. I wrote Gone Away the afternoon of a breakup, looking across a field at NC State, watching the sun set.

It took me eight years to finish undergrad. I had to play catch-up in real life later. But it was a wonderful, fun time.

During The 2nd, we made our first recordings, at Weststreet.

Weststreet Recording

Weststreet Recording had just opened near Broughton High School.

Mike's dad, Mike Anderson Sr., owned a screen printing business. He printed shirts for the Ramones, among others. Weststreet asked him to make their merchandise. He traded the merch for studio time for us.

That got us in the door. We cut our first three songs, maybe five. Trees Are Green was one of them. Over time we recorded 10 to 12 songs at Weststreet. I wrote about eight. David Moreland wrote about four.

Those sessions became most of our recorded library. We used them as demos. We used them to get gigs and to shop the band.

We got on the radio too, including a couple of big local stations. WRDU had us in the studio for their local segment. We did an interview, and they played tracks from Weststreet. An early version of Trees Are Green. And Something to Prove, a song David wrote.

The Drive-In

At the height of The 2nd, we were known enough, and good enough, to work with Mitch Easter. Mitch produced R.E.M.'s early records, Let's Active, and a lot of bands around here. He agreed to produce a three-song demo for us.

We recorded it at The Drive-In in early 1992. Passed Out, which I wrote. Farther Down, which David Moreland wrote. And There Without Myself, which I wrote.

That's the tape we sold in local record stores. I still listen to it. They're great recordings. We did not redo these songs for The New Olds.

By then we were playing all over. Raleigh, Winston-Salem, Chapel Hill, Greenville, and around the Southeast. People knew the band. People knew some of the songs. Some still do.

But not everyone could make the commitment to keep going. The 2nd ended around 1994 or 1995. Not with a bang. More like a whimper. There was no blowup. It just ended. After that, I lost touch with almost everybody.

In between

Between the end of The 2nd and 2005, some things changed and some didn't.

Most of us got married. Most of us started having kids. We started careers, or grew in them. I caught up. I went to graduate school and got my MBA. I worked a real job.

But I still wrote music. That has always been a compulsion for me. When most people are watching movies or going out, I'm in the dark with headphones on and a guitar. It used to be with a tape deck. Now it's with a computer.

That's when I wrote the music for Crave. I also wrote a lot of the melodies and riffs for songs like Closer to You (I've Been Told). They didn't get finished until later.

There were also four or five years in there when I didn't touch a guitar at all.

Crave

One day in 2005, I was driving down the highway when my phone rang. It was Charlie. He said, “Hey, I think it's time we make some music again.”

I said, “Well, I guess we'd better call Mike.”

So Mike, Charlie, and I got together. Thomas wasn't available to play. We had lost touch after The 2nd. David Moreland had moved to the western part of the state, and we had lost touch with him too.

We needed a bass player. A friend of mine knew Walt Hensey. Walt was the younger brother of someone we went to high school with. He went to Broughton too, a few years behind us. And he was a real bass player. He solidified our sound.

We went as a three-piece plus vocals. No keyboards. Crave was a loud, hard-edged version of what we had been.

Over the next four years, we went from not playing for 10 years to playing clubs and shows all around the area. Crowds of hundreds. Old-school club shows, loud, with big PA systems. We played The Pour House a lot. We practiced every week. We wrote a lot, recorded a lot, and made a lot of demos. It was a really good time.

Three songs on The New Olds come from the Crave years. I wrote No Pill after a terrible fever. I wrote Closer to You (I've Been Told) during a time of personal struggle. Crave is about how we all are. Its music came from the downtime between bands. I wrote that music on the night of 9/11, so it carries that feeling.

Osceola

Crave recorded with Dick Hodgin at Osceola Studios. Dick produced a lot of Hootie and the Blowfish's early demos. He also did a lot of work with Jason Michael Carroll. He still runs the studio here in Raleigh.

We made a three-song EP called What Do You? It got some play, and we streamed it some on Apple. Spotify wasn't around yet.

Tape to hard drive

I have recorded my songs with whatever tools I could get, ever since I was a kid.

It started with two cassette players. I recorded a part on one. Then I played it back and recorded myself playing along on the other. That gave me two tracks. Next came a cassette four-track. Then a standalone digital recorder, which was really hard to use.

Our first studio sessions were on tape. Weststreet was on reel-to-reel. Our session with Mitch Easter at The Drive-In is on a two-inch Ampex reel. I still have it.

In the mid-2000s, I learned to record on a PC. Around then we recorded with Dick Hodgin at Osceola. He used Pro Tools, and it was the first time I had seen it. I was amazed. I learned it, and I moved from tape to the digital world. Osceola's work lives on a hard drive.

The New Olds lives on a hard drive too. It is a mix of real instruments and electronic ones, played by Mike, Thomas, or me.

November 13, 2008

On November 13, 2008, I woke up around 7:15 in the morning and had a stroke. A blood clot had lodged in the left side of my brain. It probably came from a surgery I'd had on my wrist.

I remember the day. I remember going to the hospital. I couldn't talk right. I couldn't put my thoughts together or write properly.

The funny thing is, I knew it was coming. I must have said “I'm going to blow a gasket” or “I'm going to have a stroke” a thousand times. It was my go-to line. When the neurologist leaned over and told me I was having a stroke, I said, “I know.”

I got tPA, which broke up the clot. By five that afternoon, I was eating fried chicken and mashed potatoes. But I still couldn't think clearly or write. I have a diary with my handwriting from those days. It's strange to look at.

I had no lasting physical problems. I did have to relearn some math, and how to work with numbers.

It turned out I had a PFO, a hole in my heart. The clot had passed through it. On January 9, 2009, they patched it with a catheter. I was awake for it. Then I went home and recovered for a few months.

That's when I wrote Psychic Knowledge. It's all about knowing that was going to happen. Not long after, I got divorced. There are verses in the song about knowing that was coming too, and that nothing would change it.

It was a time of great change. I got Psychic Knowledge out of it. Then I got a whole new life.

Crave played one more time after the stroke. That was the end of that version of the band.

After Psychic Knowledge, I did some recording and reworked some older songs. Then I basically stopped writing and recording, until November 2025.

Laurie and I got together in 2012, about three and a half years after the stroke. My whole life had come apart and was coming back together. We got married in 2015, and I've been with her ever since.

I've been able to make this record inside that relationship. I've built my consulting business there too. I feel like I'm the best version of myself now.

Crave, again

From 2016 to 2018, Crave got back together. Thomas came back, and Walt was still on bass. We played a few shows. It was nice. It wasn't the same, though. We didn't play many big shows or make much new music.

One of the best things about it was that it brought people back together we hadn't seen in a long time. David Moreland turned up, and we reconnected with him. And we saw Mike Curlee again. If Crave hadn't gotten back together, we would never have seen him again before we lost him.

It was a nice way to revisit it all. It was also the end of it.

Across Sasquatch, The 2nd, and Crave, we played more than 100 shows.

In September 2018, we were playing a show at The Pour House. A voice in my head asked, “What are you doing, Dave?” It challenged me. It made me ask why I was putting so much into this.

That was the last time I played live until 2024.

Art, then funk

After Crave wound down in 2018, I didn't play guitar or make any music for years. It was about five years before I did anything creative at all.

Then I started making art again, around 2022. I did a few art shows. It was mixed media, but mostly pencil and pen drawings. I started with pop art and ended up with more realistic work. I even sold some. It was fun. I still have all the supplies.

In 2024, some guys I knew were putting together a funk band. They needed a rhythm guitar player. I wanted to try something new. I didn't want to play the old music I'd gotten tired of.

The band grew into a diverse seven-piece called The Radio Theory. It had a ton of talent and a ton of potential. We played old classics and new funk. It was a real stretch for me.

After a run of shows, The Radio Theory disbanded in November 2025. That band made me a better musician. It inspired me to revisit my songs.

The Kings of Hearts

Right as The Radio Theory was ending, Charlie's son asked if we would play a fraternity party at NC State. A Generation X band at a big, loud frat party. It sounded fun. We tried to put Crave back together with Mike, Thomas, and Walt, and we added Richard. The party got canceled. That band never played anywhere.

But playing with the old guys woke something up. I wanted to play and record again. The songs I had written felt alive again.

So I recorded the music for Without You I Would Die, just for fun. I was surprised at how good it sounded, and at what I could do on my own.

That's when I started working on The New Olds.

I didn't set out to make The New Olds. I didn't set out to make an album at all. I just kept recording songs I had never finished.

At first, the idea was to capture songs the band used to play live. Songs people knew that never got recorded in a studio. And songs that did get recorded, but that I wanted to redo because they needed updating.

Recording The New Olds has been a labor of love. I have spent hundreds of hours with headphones on and speakers going, building these songs to get them where they are.

This is the first time I've been able to get a recording of what I always heard in my head. Everything on the album is the way I meant it to be when I wrote it.

Everything was recorded right here in Raleigh. I used Logic Pro. The guitars are a 1992 Fender Eric Clapton Stratocaster, a 2023 Eastman Romeo California, and a 2011 Gibson Custom J-45 acoustic.

Getting Charlie back to sing was easy. He loves to sing and just needs an excuse. And these have always been his songs to sing. Now he finally got the chance.

We love working together, so it's an easy collaboration. That's one way we're different from a lot of yin-and-yang partners. We don't argue.

Naming this band was hard. We couldn't use Sasquatch, The 2nd, or Crave. Partly because we didn't want to be those bands again. Partly because other bands already had those names.

I didn't want anything hokey or jokey. No “Sasquatch's 2nd Craving.” No “Papa Squatch.” I wanted something serious. Something true to who we are, and to Raleigh.

The two times Sasquatch played for the whole school, it was for the Queen of Hearts dance. That's a Broughton tradition that goes back generations, maybe to the 1920s or '30s. We played it two years in a row. There were a couple of thousand people there, and they were with us. It was one of our first tastes of a big crowd that really loved us.

So the band is The Kings of Hearts. It's a callback to those nights.

The players

Some of the old band is on this record too.

David Moreland's bass on Trees Are Green is the part he played in 1990. Dayna Wittman recorded it at Weststreet. It's embedded in the 2026 recording.

Thomas brought over his synthesizer for Trees Are Green. It's the same one he played on the original version in 1990. So on that track, Thomas is playing vintage gear alongside David's original bass part. It's the most literal version of what this record is.

Thomas also plays piano on Gone Away.

Mike Anderson plays drums on After All. He also consulted on the drums for every other song.

Still Looking

Still Looking is the newest song. I wanted it to be true to the kind of songs I write. Confessional. Me talking. Except on this one, I talk a little more for all of us. It looks back on all of it.

Sometimes I don't know where the words come from until long after. In some verses I'm talking to the general you. In some I'm talking to one person. It's just feelings, in music.

It's the first real song with lyrics I've written and produced since Psychic Knowledge. I wanted something calm, soft, and pensive to end on. It was always meant to close the record.