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.
//
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.
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.
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.
//
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?
This is, yes, a #cover-of-a-cover. Appreciation, not appropriation, I hope. And I do, indeed, appreciate Snoop. One of the first big music videos I ever worked on was a “featuring Snoop Dogg, Da Brat, and Missy Elliot” remix of a huge hit, and I was young and dumb enough to believe I could take pictures of my colleagues posing with Snoop, on a soundstage in New York, in the year of our lord 1999, with my 1950s Canon FT that looked like an accident, and so did its light meter, on the inside, anyway, and let’s just say my film did not come home with me that night, but I was well paid for my labor.
This song is a Napster classic, a mislabeled-as-Phish viral hit so aged, that I remember downloading it with what may have seriously been an IBM-compatible PC with 512kb of RAM? C’mon, is that true? I must’ve upgraded to like, a Pentium 133 before then, because this was the computer I “learned” Photoshop on, mostly to fix the pink stripe my cheap scanner put on everything.
Anyway.
Yes, it’s a bluegrass-adjacent cover of one of Snoop’s greatest.
//
Some of these songs are long, y’all. I’m going to do something shorter tomorrow.
Um, I guess it’s “In My Feels”-structure week here at the ol’ songs365 project, but there you have it.
Obviously a cover-of-a-cover, but who wrote Blue Moon, really?
[wikipedia noises]
Oh, it’s Rodgers and Hart, and not controversial, I guess. OK! Seems like they kept trying to use the melody in musicals where it didn’t fit, and oh, just to tie it together with Mystery Train, the Elvis version of this song appears in the Jarmusch movie as a plot device. I hope that’s not a spoiler. I prefer Down By Law, anyway.
//
Just one extra guitar and one extra vocal because I am trying to get better at adding fewer things when it makes more sense. The Elvis record is sparse AF, although listening to it now on headphones, there’s a bunch of reverby echoey stuff going on in the vocal, which I imagine was some fun physical analog tape trick, or a characteristic of the actual space. Also it sounds like somebody is playing two coconuts, Holy Grail-style, to make it sound like a cowboy movie.
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.
//
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:
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. 🙂
//
Literally going to West Virginia for the weekend, so this is a fully non-ironic performance.
It’s later years Rick Rubin produced Johnny Cash, so no surprise this song is actually a #cover-of-a-cover and is really a Doc Watson song.
Lucky for me, I love Doc Watson songs, but haven’t listened to the classics in a while, so now he’s on the project list.
I was describing my “oh crap I don’t have a plan and it’s getting late, better go to the Johnny/Willie/Bob well again” project planning method to my partner earlier tonight, and softly sang a couple ideas, and she suggested this one without further prompting, and my dears, her wish is my command, so it is done.
//
More echo, more reverb, more black hats.
Apparently, Johnny plays this in B? But I learned it without a capo years ago. (Not coincidentally around the time I met my wife, and I like the open chords.)
This song is another off the Sweet Relief tribute to Victoria Williams, Lucinda’s sister, circa the year I worked at the first record store. (The original is sparse and sweet and amazing.)
For a long time it was my “going back to wherever I live after a trip somewhere else” song, as the plane descended into New York, or anywhere else, and the lights of the city look so good.
//
Father’s Day project, started in the morning before our hike out at the Manassas battlefield park, and finished after, but before dinner.
I can’t really sing the high parts in this, but the rest of it is passable, including, surprise, this key works just fine for one of my ol’ harps. (I cleaned it up a little. but I think I’m supposed to soak it or something to limber it up after sitting in a box on a shelf for a bunch of years.
Oh, and there’s no good chord chart for this on the internet, so I had to figure it out myself, more or less. I really need to sign into my account at one of those places and submit this one.
Why? Because it’s in a key I can deal with, and an expectation I can deal with, and instrumentation I can deal with, including this guitar that’s still missing a high E string, because tonight I decided to just replace the one string real quick and looked for strings and realize all I have are electric strings, which probably also need changing, so it’s time to get some acoustic strings.
Stay tuned. (ha)
When Ryan Adams put out his album that was a cover of the Taylor Swift album, this song was my favorite, but I liked the whole thing a ton, and said so, and said something about how it took Ryan Adams to get me into Taylor Swift, and I got absolutely roasted on Twitter because I shouldn’t need a dude to get me into songs that Taylor Swift wrote, and it’s true, and I feel like I’ve done my penance by singing backup on Shake It Off at karaoke a lot in the past few years?
//
I have a Ryan Adams story, but it’s confusing and hard to track down evidence online that this happened.
But, briefly: One of the last music videos I worked on in New York City in the summer of 2001 was a Ryan Adams video. I don’t really remember the song, but we filmed him riding around in a limo all over town and sorta partying. I don’t remember shooting him playing the song.
And then Sept. 11 happened, and instead of that limo video, the “I’ll always love you New York” video with the city in the background came out.