Today I’m releasing an acoustic cover of Blink 182’s Dammit from my dorm room in 2001. Millions of people have been listening to it for years and I had no idea. Here's the recording.

Here's the story. In February 2001, a late winter snow quietly fell outside my window at 80 Boylston Street in Boston. It was my first year at Emerson College, I had left my drum set back home in Vermont and brought my guitar.

I was determined to learn how to play, write and sing songs.

That night I recorded an acoustic version of the Blink 182 song “Dammit”. I loved that song and I felt like that song was more sad than the recording, so I sang it that way. I overdubbed a little guitar line and I tried harmonizing with my voice.

I uploaded it to mp3.com and put it in my shared Napster library along with some other tracks. For a few months it enjoyed chart success on mp3.com and the recording was shared quite a number of times out of my Napster account. Over the years, people would tell me they first heard me through that recording, but I mostly forgot about it. I don’t think I ever played it live. Maybe a few times that year.

I would get messages about it sometimes.

Once, it was brought to my attention that the mp3 had been passed around and mis-named as a lost acoustic cover by the singer of System of a Down. Sometimes it was credited to the singer from Rise Against. I would get “Is this you?” emails about that occasionally. I would always kindly set the record straight and send over an mp3.

But a year ago, someone reached out and sent me a link to a youtube video. Again, misattributed to these other singers but with view numbers in the millions. Millions?

This one just one of dozens. I could not believe it - millions and millions of YouTube viewers have sought out the song. It was my own little mini Searching For Sugarman story. I loved reading the comments, especially when commenters insisted it was me and no one would believe them.

I was also pleasantly surprised to hear how much the recording meant to so many people.

So, nearly 20 years later, I’ve decided to release it.

I thought about re-recording it - there is so much that I would do differently now. But c’est la vie. This is a 19 year old kid learning how to use his tools and it’s an artifact of a much more emo time.

A nice coda to this story is that the photograph I used for the cover was taken by my friend Jeff Fry from Texas who first discovered my music by downloading this song (before it was mis-tagged) and has since become one of my closest allies in the grey area between fan and friend that I’m so lucky to experience.

So here it is.

If this song means something to you, enjoy, if you’ve never heard it, there I am, 19, learning to play and sing, wondering what life has in store.

-S