Unironically doing songs I learned at summer camp during the exact time of year I used to go to summer camp, because it’s summer camp season.
This song is one I apparently used to know better? At least, I feel like the chord changes around the chorus used to be less mystifying, and the end of the solo, indeed, worked better on an electric that has enough frets, but I know for a fact that never stopped me before.
I can’t begin to describe how tired I am right now, so this is what you get on day 187, and not some sly Snoop reference, like a cover-of-a-cover of Gin & Juice, though that is tempting.
This song is somehow both unavoidable Classic Rock Radio but also meaningful because summer camp, and reminds me of one specific person, but maybe also the dog, because I hiked all day without her, and I do, in fact, wish she were here.
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Rehearsed this one on a literal porch swing, authentic AF out here in West Virginia. Tomorrow we head home, and I’ll be back in the basement with all my toys. Including faster internet upload speeds.
It’s July Fourth, and what’s more American than Elvis stealing a song from a black man, goofing around dropping it as a b-side on a silly ballad, and having it make lots of “best songs of the century” long lists, 50 years later.
This song is fun, though, and 1956 seems like a long time ago, so we’ll let it ride.
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Recorded in a super cute Airbnb’d house in Lewisburg, WV, and inspired by checking out a waterfall and hike near some railroad tracks today, but also, once you’re invested in train songs, best to keep the streak alive. Gotta love songs that count the number of cars on the train — feels like maybe I need to do Johnny Cash tomorrow?
Also: Uploading 300MB+ videos from the road is… interesting… Last night’s was from my phone on burrito spot wifi. Today, the 2MB up internet is choking hard when I try to upload to Media Library directly, but uploading to Google Drive from my phone seemed to work OK, though I couldn’t find a way to embed that, and now I’m uploading it from my phone to YouTube, so that’s why there’s a YouTube embed this time around, which I’ve really actively been avoiding. Because YouTube. :shrug:
The Train That Carried My Girl From Town, by Doc Watson.
This song is one of my favorite Doc Watson numbers, and ties into In The Pines a bit (the longest train I ever saw….) and also I’m in West Virginia, and also Tennessee Stud reminded me of Doc Watson, and I went looking through his songs while literally walking in the woods today and found this one waiting for me, so I sang it on the trail the rest of the day.
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The audio and video quality on my phone continues to troll me.
Take Me Home, Country Roads, by Toots and the Maytals.
Yes, indeed, this is a #cover-of-a-cover, because I have heard Toots sing this song way, way, way, way more times than I have heard John Denver sing it.
This might be the easiest Toots song to cover, but it’s not the most important to me, but also it’s pretty moving, tbqh. Higher up on my list of formative joy-inducing Toots goodness: Reggae Got Soul, Funky Kingston, 54-46, Pressure Drop, etc., etc.
Toots is also the greatest performer I have ever seen in concert in my life. Beats Jagger, beats, McCartney, beats Axl Rose, beats … idk, Wayne Shorter? Beats them all. If I had ever seen James Brown play, it would’ve been a contest.
Toots and the Maytals live shows were a highlight of my college years, punctuation to my years in New York just as much as Stereolab or The Sea and Cake, just as much as trips to Central Park. Toots danced and sang and played and fell to his knees in soulful prayer, and lifted us heavenward with his hands and eyes and voice. Toots poured water in our mouths when we were thirsty (this is true!) and didn’t look like he was judging the crowd full of white kids (sometimes a ska crowd at Wetlands, sometimes a frat crowd at Tramps, sometimes hippie kids mixed into both), although the rest of the band might’ve given us some skeptical looks now and then. 🙂
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Literally going to West Virginia for the weekend, so this is a fully non-ironic performance.
Had to put on the hat to sing about horses, and childhood living, and all the things that couldn’t tear me away.
This song, for whatever reason, takes me straight to a friend’s room on the lake, but we probably were still living across the street, and I can only guess that I heard this song on a tape there for the first time, even if that seems a little unlikely. But that’s where I am, complete with the sun streaming in and bouncing off the clay tiles.
Memories are weirdly specific like that.
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Added a guitar solo or two, because I like the changes.
Seemed like a good moment to look up proper microphone positions and try one out. Seemed kinda decent before I decided to layer on more vocals, after wisely singing something resembling a harmony on a couple choruses on the main track? [nervous laughter]
I attempted this song a few times on other nights earlier this year, and I’m not sure what stopped me, but the best performance tonight was in rehearsal, natch, and the second best was in the first take that I had to stop because my hard drive was full again, and reader, it’s full because “a song a day” adds up real quick when there’s a .mov from the video recording and then a .m4v from Garage Band and then a .mp4 coming out of iMovie to upload.
The fun thing about this song is that I think there might be a few different iterations of it on different Spacemen 3 records? Like, why do the lyrics online say “In 1987…” if my memory of them singing “In 1986…” is so clear? Or maybe I was, uh, following their instructions a little too closely at times when I was listening to this music closer to 1996 and 1997, but whatever.
This song is a simple blues thing that gets weird and psychedelic, because that’s what this band does with lots of songs.
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I probably should’ve done more mixing to start out clean and ramp up the psychedelics on this track, but I did not, so it’s spaced out from the jump.
And a little hot on one of the vocal tracks apparently? I did not catch that until I heard the video. Deal with it.
Had to triple-check I didn’t do this song yet, because I’ve done it at karaoke, and I sing it in the car pretty regularly, and it’s the first Hank Williams song I really fell for, and it’s only two chords long, and it’s late, and we just watched Parasite (for the first time) and it feels somehow relevant, but also not relevant.
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Still having fun with reverb. And those are like 3/4 of the right harmonics, and I didn’t attempt the closing lick, because the rest of it went so well.
Definitely my best Fleet Foxes take so far, I think. This song popped into my head this morning and I stuck with it. All the usual confusion about how to sing and record harmonies applies. Had to check if the chords/fingering on this one was really as easy as it seemed (and I still didn’t get it perfect, but it’s alright), but there was no special weird tuning for this.
The first Fleet Foxes album is a reminder that I really don’t remember where I heard the first Fleet Foxes album, or why I bought it, but I do remember that I first really played it for the family on our first drive to the Outer Banks in 2012, and I’m particularly reminded of one of the stretches of road near the Virginia-North Carolina border that kinda overflows with expectation, because it feels like you’re getting there even though there are still hours of drive to go, especially if it’s a Saturday and you’re going all the way to Corolla, like we did the first year.
Family road trip next weekend, so I guess I’m bringing the guitar?