Reid Genauer Chronicles 30 Years In Song On Ambitious 100-Track Project ‘This Is What I Saw’

Reid Genauer, frontman of Strangefolk and Assembly of Dust, was inspired by a piece of fan art to create This Is What I Saw, a collection of 100 songs from throughout his career that he re-recorded over five days in the California Redwoods. Out today is the first of the project’s five “scenes” of 20 songs, with future installments to follow every six weeks.

The genesis of the project came from a 36″ x 24″ pen-and-ink print drawn by artist Pete Nogas that incorporates references to all 100 songs from Reid Genauer’s career-spanning catalog. Genauer decided to revisit each of the songs at Sloth Mountain in La Honda, California. The celebrated singer-songwriter went into the sessions with just a Martin, a Strat, a banjotar and a microphone. No overdubs. No band.

“I wasn’t trying to perfect anything,” Genauer said. “I wanted to live the songs as one body of work and see what remained once everything else was removed.”

After five days, Reid Genauer came away with This Is What I Saw, a set featuring all of its 100 tracks captured in single takes. Genauer recalled the process and shared the following in regards to This Is What I Saw:

I didn’t set out to record 100 songs. I set out to look at a drawing.

Pete Nogas made a pen-and-ink illustration that contained 100 of my songs, and for a long time I treated it like a trophy — something impressive, something earned. Then one morning, somewhere between sleep and caffeine, the thing turned on me.

It wasn’t a drawing anymore. It was an atlas.

That’s when it got uncomfortable. Songs written decades apart were suddenly neighbors. Characters I thought I’d invented once were clearly serial offenders. Places kept showing up like they had unfinished business. It felt less like nostalgia and more like evidence.

I won’t go too far down the psychological rabbit hole — that part is best explored with professional supervision — but the short version is this: once I saw the songs that way, I needed to hear them without context, without production, without the armor we usually give them.

Naturally, I chose the least reasonable way to do that.

Five days. One hundred songs. No overdubs. No band. Just me and a small army of stringed instruments, including a banjitar that defies both taxonomy and good sense. Mostly I played my Martin D-35 and an old classical guitar that sounds like it remembers things I don’t.

The recordings happened at Sloth Mountain Studios in La Honda, California — a place that feels slightly outside of time. Brian Sagrafena built it, stocked it, fed me well, and didn’t let me overthink anything. My kids were there. Jason Cirimele kept things moving. The forest did the rest.

Some songs landed cleanly. Some wandered off. A few gained or lost verses along the way. That didn’t feel like failure — it felt like honesty. These versions aren’t definitive. They’re documentary. I chose to arrange all 100 songs alphabetically rather than chronologically which pits 16 year old Reid talking with 46 year old Reid saying something like “heeeey man you should have listened to me”

I’ve always believed songs know more than the people who write them. This project leans into that belief hard. This Is What I Saw isn’t a statement or a summary. It’s a glimpse — five Scenes released over time, capturing what happens when you stop correcting the past and let it speak for itself.

Or at least… that’s how I remember it.

As a treat for fans, Reid Genauer folded in a handful of previously unreleased songs. The “easter egg” in the first scene is a brand new tune entiled “Cocaine Jesus,” the only song recorded with accompaniment. Genauer is joined on the track by the project’s engineer, Jason Cirimele, on bass and the owner of the studio, Brian Sagrafena, on drums. Sagrafena is best known for his time behind the kit with Echobrain, the band that led to bassist Jason Newsted’s departure from Metallica.

This Is What I Saw will be issued on vinyl once all five “scenes” are out. Stream or purchase the first installment via nugs below and on major streaming services starting on January 27: