I've been a fan of Freedy's since his first record and am happy to hear some NEW, OLD songs. The sound is raw and emotional and the songwriting is, as usual, excellent...Enchanted Car, Love Songs About Girls, I Do I Do, Man with the Four-Stroke Heart are some of my favorites. The feeling of the record is intimate - like being at a great live show. Buy this record if you loved Can You Fly.

Although I have been a big fan of Freedy's previous work, he has clearly evolved in a more mature direction, with an emphasis on craft. That stuff's great, but I can't deny that I have missed the youthful exuberance of his earliest recordings (or what I thought were his earliest recordings). That is why this collection is such a welcome addition; it's clearly the result of someone who's having fun and not taking himself too seriously-and it all works perfectly. This man can write songs-and they come across with a splashy immediacy on The Way I Were. All his styles are in the house here- Straight up rock songs with bizarre stories and shovels of lyrics shoehorned in, appalachian porch torch songs, bent country, gorgeous ballads, and always the beautiful losers who we've come to love from his other records. But this time with a crazy, refreshing spontaniety. A keeper.

Since this CD wasn't reviewed I incorrectly thought it was a new cd from one of my favorite performers, Freedy Johnston. It is a collection of old demo tapes from the eighties to the early nineties instead. The sound quality sounds like the original demo tapes and the material is not refined and sounds mostly like fractured ideas instead of songs.