EXCLUSIVE: Unearthed Garth Brooks demo tape

NEVER-BEFORE-HEARD RECORDING FEATURES LATE SINGER LARI WHITE

Garth Brooks during a live taping of Austin City Limits on PBS (KLRU/Scott Newton)

It’s well known in the music world that before Garth Brooks became Garth Brooks, he sang demos (i.e., demonstration tapes) around Nashville throughout the late 1980s. But while tales of a young, pre-fame Garth vocal demo might be common around Music City, actually finding or hearing one is a different story.

This is a different story.

While researching the music of Lari White for my forthcoming documentary about her life and career, I learned that RCA Nashville’s original music video for the title track of her 1993 debut album—Lead Me Not—was nowhere to be found.

Locked down in Los Angeles at the height of the 2020 pandemic, I determined to track down the lost music video, a work-from-home journey I chronicled in Did This Music Video Ever Exist?

Although the original Lead Me Not music video has yet to surface, my search led me to a mid-1990s TV interview that revealed yet another “lost” Lead Me Not recording. In the interview, White reveals to host Ralph Emery that a then-unknown Garth Brooks recorded the original demo of the song.

RALPH EMERY: “I thought Lead Me Not was a super record. Who did the [original] demo for Lead Me Not?

LARI WHITE: “Well, I think that was the last demo that Garth Brooks sang. His first single had just come out and was just begging to climb the charts. He came into the studio with me and I played piano and he sang…”

EMERY: “Do you still have the demo of Garth Brooks singing Lead Me Not?”

WHITE: “I have been frantically looking for it for years now! … And I know that somewhere in this pile of cassettes is Garth Brooks singing the original demo of Lead Me Not — I’m going to find it!”

Lari White played a pivotal role in the 2000 blockbuster film Cast Away (20th Century Fox)

Fast forward one year:

On a Saturday afternoon at my home in Los Angeles, a large FedEx envelope arrived to my front door. When I opened the package, I found a late 1980s style DAT (Digital Audio Tape) with a handwritten label which read: “Lead Me Not (Garth).”

Less than 90 minutes later I was at a Hollywood sound studio, hopeful that the tape in this padded envelope was in fact the demo recording the label’s handwriting claimed it to be. As I carefully handed the DAT to the recording studio’s laidback sound dude, I prayed that this fragile thirty-something year old tape wouldn’t disintegrate when we pressed the play button.

“Well, I should have been home hours ago
I always lose track of the time
I'll just hold up this wall while I try to recall
A thought from the back of my mind”
— Lead Me Not

“Damn, this guy is really good!” My relaxed Hollywood sound guy was now fully awake, looking as if he’d just discovered the next big voice in music. It was Garth.

We increased the volume as the faint 30+ year recording of Lead Me Not played out from a modernized Sony tape deck. I sat in shock as I processed the reality that this this “lost” Nashville demo was coming back to life—live and right before my ears.

But there was still one last surprise about to emerge from the tape’s magnetic strip. As Garth’s signature twang arrived at the song’s chorus, my ears heard a second all-too-familiar voice join in—the very voice that first told Ralph Emery that this demo tape was out there somewhere.

And, I must say, Garth Brooks and Lari White sure sounded great together.

“Lead me not into temptation
I can find it all by myself”

Distinguished songwriter and producer Lari White passed away in 2018 at the age of 52 (Nashville Scene)

The Amazing Grace of Lari White (dir. Joseph Fenity) will be released at the end of 2023