Imagine the beginning of your producing career. You meet a  teenage girl who wants to start a music career. Then you guys record few songs and you never hear from them again. Then the girl gets married and changes her last name from Anderson to Mitchell. Then one day you recognize a famous singer from your past as the girl from the studio. That girl who recorded music with you, is Joni Mitchell. Seems fake, right? And as Joni get bigger, you tell your story of the first time she was in studio with you and people question as to whether or not you have a really good make up tale. Well guess what? It was true for Barry Bowman.

Barry Bowman was a on air personality for CFAX 1070 in Victoria had an interesting box dropped off at his door from his daughter. In 2015, The Vancouver Islander’s, daughter dropped off a box at his door. He joked about having old Joni Mitchell tapes in the box. Sure enough, as he opened the box, he saw them right on top. Joni Mitchell’s first ever recoded tapes sitting there. “Joni Anderson” is written on the reel. There was a total of nine songs on those tapes.

Bowman spoke to David Foster, a Canadian Producer, a told him he has her tapes. He was told it would take time as they needed permission from Mitchell or her managers to do anything with the tapes.

It took a few year but in 2018, Bowman got to hand Joni the Tapes himself. They met at LAX and Bowman says, “She embraced my wife and me and took us into her life with her people.”

(@jonimitchell / Twitter)

To Bowman’s surprise, these records will be releasing on October 30th on her upcoming album, Joni Mitchell Archives,  and he gets some of the compensation. Mitchell will also be having other recordings from her years leading up to her debut album, Song to a Seagull.