Free See. The first time I heard the song was when I lived outside of Maryville sometime in the mid 90's. Camp David would come out and rehearse at my farm house tuning up for future shows in Kansas City and Omaha. I believe it was the first song where Marc would join in with Ed and Jimmy on guitar. I was blown away because it was so unlike what most bands were doing at that point. Mimicking the latest grunge or Seattle band was the norm and Camp David seemed to have a sound all there own.

I believe they were invited by a recording studio up in Omaha to come up and record a track for free in the hopes of securing them to book more recording time in the future. Free See is the song they recorded. After the session the engineer asked Marc if he had a tape so he may dub him off a copy of the mix. This is before you could get a cd after a session. I believe Marc had a junk mix tap of sort out in the car so he secured that for the guy to copy a quick mix onto. The dub was made and Camp David went away with the only copy on Marc's shitty mix tape. Well needless to say Camp David never returned to the studio to complete the mix or master the track. No one knows what happened to the masters at the studio as they were lost once Camp David called it quits. It remained a side note and contributed to the song and bands legend. There is a side story to this song that is worth mentioning at a later date. A quite gruesome coincidence or prophecy tale with the lyrics of Free See foreshadowing some of Maryville's most dark days.

Fast forward 10 years. Jimmy, Marc, Mike and I had started The Rogers. Marc and I would drive around in Marc's 1995 Ford Tempo and the tape with Free See would garble through the tape player on the Tempo's horrible stereo. Of course, if you know Marc, you would know he had never bothered to copy the tape so the original stayed in his car faithfully playing the song over and over occasionally spilling the tape out from deck onto the floor. I would be charged with carefully rolling the tape back into the cassette while Marc pumped his fist high with a huge grin on his face. The Tempo was sold and Marc yanked the tape from the floor board and into a box where it was forgot.

Fast forward another 10 years. I asked Marc about the tape and if he still had it as I wanted to hear Free See again. I told him if he found it maybe I could digitize and master it it along with fixing any tape damage it had sustained in the Ford Tempo. The tape turned up after a couple of years in a box Marc was shuffling through. My task had begun of seeing what I could do with ol Free See.

Yes it had sustained damage. But surprisingly not as much as I had predicted. I jumped in with some mastering and restoration. I think the quick mix on the original tape was decent enough. Aside from Marc's first verse missing lyrics and some unrepairable tape damage it could be moderately saved. The track sounds okay. If you count it was rescued from the bottom of a Ford Tempo floorboard I think you can live with some of the defects.

I'm not sure if some of the members of Camp David have heard this song since the drive back home from the recording session. This ones for you Ed.....