Abe Okie

As a young boy, Abe was raised on the rich songcraft of Arlo Guthrie, Randy Newman, and Run DMC. As a sophomore in high school he entered a talent show with his timeless paean to emotional indiscretion, "Just Don't Hold It In". He didn't win, but he did learn a valuable life lesson: playing guitar can help you get girls.

Later he learned to write better songs. In 2000, he recorded a spare collection of mostly acoustic sketches aptly titled Songs I Wrote for Your Girlfriend, which was lauded at the time as a "scathing critique of high school social strata." Though rough and unready for radio, this demo would garner the attention of several of his friends and cement his reputation as a sensitive navel-gazer. Abe is now embarrassed by many of these songs, and the record is sadly out of print.

Over the next couple of years, he would continue to write and record songs, even as his star rose as a Special Japanese Paper Agent. His musical career trajectory would culminate in him writing an uninformative bio on download.com in 2004.

Along the way, he learned that it's possible--but not necessarily easy--to communicate profound truths through a crude medium called the 3 1/2 minute pop song, and he would become fascinated by that possibility. He would also come to believe that some things are worth saying, even if they are not heard. And sometimes you can say more by what you leave unsaid.

That being said (or unsaid), the charge of the artist is not to re-invent tonality, but to re-create what already is, hopefully in a new fashion that causes one to think twice, feel again, or at least tap the foot.

Abe's sounds can be disparate, but are woven with the sturdy threads of rock, folk, and americana. These songs are rough and unfinished, but honest in their humanity. They are just snapshots, grainy and askew, of one redemptive journey.

So download them. Enjoy them. Live vicariously through them. Or just email him: abeokie@yahoo.com.