David Newland began his recording career almost by accident. During the late 80’s, Newland worked the music scene as a drummer and sound man from his Ohio home with area bands. During this period, he grew increasingly frustrated when seeking out the right mix of musicians to work and perform with. On a whim, he accepted a position with a “glam” band that was at the time traveling to the suburban Detroit city of Warren, Michigan to record at the Recording Institute of Detroit (RID).

RID teaches about the art, business, and science of music production and often uses musicians and bands referred by its students for recording projects. These projects enable the student body to practice recording, producing, and engineering live bands. Students, with minimal teacher involvement, handle any and all aspects of the recording. For the bands involved, they have an opportunity to get a finished production which often rivals any professional project on the market. Newland was totally amazed at what he saw.

“I thought the concept RID had in place was really great”, he said.

Newland became convinced that the Detroit-area had more to offer musically than his Ohio town and soon moved up to seek out the better opportunities. Besides playing drums, Newland is self-taught on bass, lead, and rhythm guitars, and soon became a regular fixture at RID, offering these diverse skills for the students to record.

“I was at RID so much many people thought I was a student”, he said.

One such occasion yielded a meeting with Bob Dennis, CEO of RID. Newland remembered Dennis from the initial session the “glam” band had done, and struck up a conversation with Dennis about songwriting and music. This meeting would prove pivotal to Newland’s career, for Dennis was very impressed with the nearly 35 songs Newland had painstakingly written and recorded with the students. This writing process had yielded some great results, Newland stated to Dennis, although he wished he knew more about the process to do better.

“Writing for me could be very frustrating. From my own experience it can drive you crazy trying to figure out the right set of words for something or making the melody flow with the music. I would always hear something in my head and I would basically write the music first then the lyrics. I would let the music give me the determination of what the words would be,” he continued,” he said.

One of the songs Dennis heard was “Loveless”, a tune which convinced Dennis to offer guidance and production help with. This song would soon find its way on a collection of songs Newland recorded for a CD entitled “For Sale”.

Over the two years it took to complete “For Sale”, Newland worked tirelessly in the studio, often learning about some element of production or recording as he recorded.

“I had in my head songs that I wanted to put on a CD and it was just a matter of making them sound good enough,” Newland said.

Since Newland had become so dependable in offering himself to be recorded, sometimes he was called in to the studio with little or no preparation. During these times he never let the students down, but would work out songs, chord progressions, lyrics and other matters of production while the students set up microphones or attended to the consoles.

“The students were really good, and I never had one bad experience or one bad recording working with them. Their help and the love of music motivated me to keep going, even after working all day at other jobs”, He said.

To further augment his productions, Newland enlisted the help of musicians such as Spike Vires on bass; Phil Vires,“Dead Bob” Wright, Donn Hill, and Mike Detzler on lead guitars; Russel (Mombo) Lociano on Sax; and Maria Dimitrieski on background vocals. Phil and Spike Vires also helped with writing some of the tunes for the CD.

All recording was done by students of RID, with editing, mixing, and mastering handled by instructors Daniel Dennis and Frank Giammanco. Newland points out that Daniel Dennis was especially helpful in achieving the results he wanted for the project. He also states that Bob Dennis’ steadfast support and encouragement also helped with the quality and tone of the work.

Newland had 500 copies of the CD made, of which 75 were given away for promotional purposes and 25 sold in local stores. For the remaining 400, Newland sold them at clubs where he and his band were performing. During these club dates, Newland became quite innovative in selling the CDs.

“If people told me they didn’t have enough money to buy the CD, I would give them the CD, tell them to take it home and listen to it. If they liked it, they could come to another show and pay me then. I sold about 400 CDs this way, and out of that 400, only 1 person ever returned the CD”, Newland said.

When asked how could he be so confident that the customer would not simply go home and burn themselves a copy of the CD or simply take the CD and run , he stated that “it’s a good judge of character” to be able to trust people in such a way.

Reaction to “For Sale” has been overwhelmingly positive with “Loveless” garnering the most praise. Other standout cuts include “Home”, “Wish I Knew”, and “Unresolved”. Plans are now underway for Newland to record even more material, with the work slated for consideration by a national artist to re-record.

“[This was] the general idea of [‘For Sale’]. A songwriting project, to be able to get the material to a producer that maybe would want to record one of the songs on a major artist”, Newland said.

For that reason, “For Sale” was never really marketed. All activity by way of promotion has been done in an “underground” sort of way. Newland now believes that he should acquire more help and education about the music industry. Towards that end, he has completed the Music Business course at RID and plans to go further still in learning more about production . He looks back on his “For Sale” project and offers this advice to anyone wishing to do as he did.

“Independent artists should get help—management, production, whatever, because one person cannot do it all. Try and get more input and guidance… (because) that extra opinion on things—what to do, what not to do, how to make a song better—really helps”, he said.