The Cornerstoned Demo

It wasn’t long after that that I met Jason Starr  and we started writing stuff together. 

We had met through our pastors at Life Chuch, and we were eventually both on the worship team there. 

A few years later, Karen and I were blessed to live in a coffee shack up in Keauhou Mauka as we agreed to help manage the 11 acre coffee mac-nut farm. An epic part of our life’s no doubt. 

The wonderful people (and now our dear Ohana) allowed Jason Starr and I to build a small music studio room directly below our coffee shack. With scrap pieces they gave us to build it and a lot of foam, the BOMB Shelter was born. That’s what we called it anyway.

It was a lot of work getting to the point where we could save enough money for microphones, and some basic recording gear to record. We didn’t need much.

My mentor and close friend who had been a father-figure to me during high-school eventually helped us with a $2,000 check that helped us get the final gear that was needed to record. 

He handed me that check the day my first son was born. Two grand seemed like a million bucks. Thank you, Dubbs!

And then, we got a few hundred more from friends and family. We were stoked!

Jason and I wrote a lot of songs together and wanted them all on the album. But the 4 songs on the Cornerstoned demo was the focus, as life for Jason was changing and he was leaving to go on his missions trip. 

So I had to finish the demo as best as I could, and then a friend from the church community there in Kona offered to mix it for me.  

So all I had to do after that was send it to New York to have the 4 tracks mastered. 

About a month later, we had a real physical CD in our hands with our music on the CD. Back in 2006, this was epic!