Description
The year was 1973 when I first landed in the port town of San Pedro by the Los Angeles Harbor. It seemed like a foreign city in a land distant from both LA and most of the rest of California. The streets and buildings were from a different era. The mix of Italian, Croatian, Spanish, Filipino, and Norwegian languages gave it an air of distance along with the food and working-class demeanor. There was a rough authenticity to this place that made it so much different than any other seaside town in Southern California. Yet underneath all of this were untold stories, places to be discovered and secrets to be revealed. It’s taken me decades to fully understand this place and even still there are some things that are buried here that may never be known. Unearthing these songs from my early years was like an archaeological dig into my own state of mind that at times challenged me and confronted me with lost memories and loves. And this is just a few of the many songs, poems, and sketches that could have been songs that made it onto this album. James Preston Allen, 2023
