Singer songwriter Caleb Guillotte presses rewind on Deadeye Dick’s gold-selling 1995 release A Different Story.

“Billy Landry had just joined on drums and his straight-ahead style fit well with the pop tastes I shared with Mark Miller, who played bass. Our initial intent was to make a high-quality demo we could sell at shows and, you know, ‘get people to like you.’

We recorded at a studio called Hart Sounds in a little subdivision in Belle Chasse. It was three ADAT recorders linked together. I think the total expenditure for three days of recording and one day of mixing was something like $2,300. Fred LeBlanc, from Cowboy Mouth, produced the session and kept the pace going so we would get all of the songs recorded. Billy Landry had only been with the band a few weeks and was still learning material. Mark had to cue him on starts and stops while we were recording some of the basic tracks.

The studio experience is a blur because we did it so quickly. We did all the basics in one day, all the musical overdubs the second day and vocals all on the third day. I think my favorite studio memories are that third day, singing all the lead vocals and most of the backing vocals. It was the greatest feeling in the world to sing over these tracks and hear my songs the way I really wanted to hear them for the first time. Doing it all in one day never even felt daunting to me because I was so excited.

What kept me energized was not just doing the lead vocals but having the chance to layer vocals, channeling my love of the Beatles and the Beach Boys. I was excited that entire day, there was great energy. Everybody was really pumped up and it was infectious.

There was so little time we just did the same arrangements we had been playing live. Whenever I would have a song I would do my best not to make any suggestion to what the bass or drum part should be, I always had something in mind but I felt like nine times out of ten Billy or Mark would come up with a better thing. I would just play guitar and they would jump up and start making something happen. Even though Billy had been in the band a really short time he’s got incredible instincts. He always did have that ‘session drummer’ vibe about him where he only served the song.

In the ’90s it was an exciting time to be unsigned because alternative radio stations still had local music shows that played local alternative bands. The Zephyr was a local station that started playing us and it was at a time when the DJs still had some flexibility and could play what tracks they wanted—so they weren’t just playing ‘New Age Girl.’ What really broke everything open was we hired an independent radio promoter whose company owned a couple of music magazines, Creem and Hit Parader. He put articles in his magazines and was buddies with a programmer at 99X in Atlanta and got him to spin the single. Our manager was Stephen Klein who was based out of Atlanta at the time and one of the most social guys ever, so he expected a reaction, but the reaction went way beyond anything he expected. Literally thousands of people reacted to ‘New Age Girl’ the first time they played it. They started spinning the song and as soon as that happened record labels started calling. We signed with Ichiban and the record went gold.

Of course the sad, cynical post-script is that after Ichiban went bankrupt, our bass player Mark got an accountant friend to look at their books. He discovered they were listing sales as returns so they wouldn’t have to pay us royalties but in doing so kept us from getting a platinum record for both ‘New Age Girl’ as a single and Different Story as an album. Both had sold in excess of a million copies but because they were listed as returns we didn’t get credit for it.

I could have had money and notoriety. but I like the life I have now.”