Untitled, by REM. (The one from Green.)
Apparently this song is the third REM number of the year! Not at all one I had intentions about, but I just stumbled across it on an REM chords site and thought it fit my mood right now pretty well, and it required actual audio production, though I still used the phone for video, which honestly wasn’t hard.
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Enough reverb and delay for you?
Long Black Veil, by The Band.
Another not-quite-a-Johnny-Cash-song, but my intent here was to cover The Band’s version of this song, which, actually, quite a bit like Thirteen, sounds like a dark country standard, but it isn’t! I mean, it is now, but it was written for Nashville, not out of some standard Americana.
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Did not stick to my plan to go the incrementally less lazy route to record tonight, and for my trouble, the computer fell asleep halfway through the last verse, and I couldn’t remember the final lines, so I had to make another edit.
Thirteen, by Johnny Cash.
Um, I think this is the first post in this project to really require a disambiguation section, maybe? Because this song is one Johnny Cash recorded, after (I assume Rick Rubin?) asked Danzig to write one for him. So it’s a Danzig song, but not really a #cover-of-a-cover? Says a lot of good things about Danzig that it sounds like an old standard, and obviously the kind of thing Johnny Cash would sing.
But also, I think it might be the first song in this project to repeat a title from a previous song? I haven’t been keeping track.
And, yes, it’s Friday the 13th, which I didn’t (consciously) notice when picking this from a list of songs on American Recordings (vol. 1), or playing it.
Also, yes, back home with the black hat, and resolving to switch back to the real microphone and whatnot. Tomorrow. Probably.
Can’t Help But Wonder Where I’m Bound, by Tom Paxton.
I know this song best as a Nanci Griffith cover, though I spotted it this morning in a list of Johnny Cash covers, as I looked to do something East Tennessee-appropriate, keeping in mind I’ve already recorded the two Dolly Parton songs I know best.
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Probably the last song from the road for a while!
Blue Spotted Tail, by Fleet Foxes.
This song is one of maybe forty or fifty Fleet Foxes tunes that are completely unidentifiable by their titles, so I just start paging through their songs on the guitar chords sites until I find something I want to play. The next real step is to start googling things like “fleet foxes weird tuning” and the song title, but I didn’t go there this time, just slapping a capo on the 7th fret as instructed, and it’s pretty as heck, a flat out lullaby, so I hope you like it.
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Not on the bear deck, but on a super resonant patio with tile floors and (fake?) stone walls.
Take It To The Limit, by the Eagles.
I mean, look, I don’t actually hate the Eagles? Like, I get it, Dude, that night, I would also have much preferred, say, Townes van Zandt to the Eagles, but I also believe in respecting the cab driver’s choice of music. I think things are different in the Uber/Lyft era, but still.
This song is one of literally ten thousand Eagles songs that were unavoidable on the radio for like the first 18 years of my life, and the whole time/money/love bit is pretty cool, as is the B7/Em (uh, or whatever it is in this key with the capo on 4).
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Recorded in a cabin in the Smokies while the kids play air hockey upstairs (you can absolutely hear them in the background). I would’ve taken the guitar outside, but it rained while we were at the grocery store, and all the decks — including the most obvious bear viewing platform — are wet.
Pastures of Plenty, by Woody Guthrie.
This song, like most Woody Guthrie songs, does a great job of storytelling about water rights. And dams. And migration. Obviously, you’ve read Grapes of Wrath! Throw Chinatown in there, and maybe much more recent stories about the almond and fruit tree business, and how water flows (or doesn’t) into it.
Ripple, by the Grateful Dead.
Do I have feelings about this song? Sure. I think everybody has feelings when they hear this song?
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Recorded tonight in mom’s art studio in Asheville, North Carolina, which is a pretty neat trick. 😉 Possibly 2-3 cats in the room at the time, but no meowing backing vocals.
Frank Mills, by the Lemonheads.
Evan Dando and the Lemonheads came up just a few days ago with a truncated version of the Do Right Woman story, and today I’ve been listening to a Bandsplain podcast about the band (it’s great for bands that you only know like that one or two albums) so it felt proper to pay proper homage with this song, a cute little throwaway thing that clocks in at 1:43 on It’s A Shame About Ray.
And of course, because I just went to the trouble to look it up, and because the podcast very specifically pointed out that Lemonheads covers are so good sometimes you don’t know they’re covers, I have just been informed that, yes, yes, indeed [puts finger to earpiece] this is in fact a #cover-of-a-cover and is originally a song from the musical Hair which I have never seen, although I could easily identify two songs from it.
So there’s that.
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I am an absolute mark for songs that mention “The Waverly” which might mean the diner on 6th Ave. in New York City, which I frequented on a short visit to check out NYU, but can’t remember setting foot in again after that? Maybe once freshman year? It could also be referencing a theater of the same name which seems like it was probably next door?
Down The Highway, by Bob Dylan.
This is another one of those moments where I’ve tuned to something weird-ish (Double Dropped D, in this case), and mess around with songs in that tuning until I find something viable. I was down there for Blue Ridge Mountains (Fleet Foxes), which I’m not ready to record yet, despite plans to be in those precise hills next week. Then I gave The Chain (Fleetwood Mac) a shot, which has wholeheartedly been on my list since I listened to one of those song-deconstruction podcast episodes about it. Then I gave the Dylan Chords site a browse, and found this song, which I only vaguely recognized, but it doesn’t really matter, because it’s one of those open chord Dylan blues things, and in open D? I can handle that.
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Had to stop and start when the computer fell asleep, so there’s a small edit and transitions, but I’m still not ready to pull out Garageband and try to produce anything elaborate.
Oh, and I drew this out like two more minutes longer than the Dylan version?