songs:365

Tag: cover-of-a-cover

  • day 139: I Shall Be Released

    I Shall Be Released, by The Band*.

    Yes, indeed, it is a cover-of-a-cover, but that is sometimes the case the the Dylan/Band overlaps. I am way, way, way more familiar with The Band’s version, so that’s what this song is for me.

    I spent a lot of time listening to The Band on a discman in Morocco — at least until I really got into the Gnaoua CD I picked up in Marrakech. This song might’ve been on one of those Band CDs I had on repeat when I hiked, alone, into the scrub outside Tinghir (Tenerhir) and left the tourist trail, scrambled up the rocks, and spent the night in what was clearly some goatherd’s regular campsite.

    In the middle of the night, I woke once to the sound of bleating animals strolling by on the path; I woke up a hundred more times to the light of the moon in my eyes. (The ultralight tarp in my daypack was not enough to block it out; the clementines and almonds I brought were sufficient nourishment, though.)

    The walk back through the date farms was a highlight of that trip, but I’ll save that for another song.

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  • day 121: All Along the Watchtower

    All Along the Watchtower, by Bob Dylan*.

    I mean, I’m obviously doing it in Jimi Hendrix’s cadence, since that’s the first one I heard, and the one I know best, and I probably heard the U2 version after that and long before the Dylan original. Seems like I never bought John Wesley Harding out of the $8.98 bargain bin. But I did own Rattle and Hum on VHS.

    This song comes up as a recurring theme in Battlestar Galactica (2000s), too, which I completely forgot until I was deep into a second or third play through it tonight.

    //

    Added bass and a lead guitar, but didn’t try to poor-man’s-version Jimi’s lines (or, uh, Dylan’s harmonica, since I was so clearly covering the Dylan version here).

    A friend requested Purple Haze, and we may have to get to that, for two reasons:

    1. It was a song I asked my guitar teacher to tab out for me circa 1990, so I played it (parts of it anyway, and poorly) for years.
    2. It was… involved… in my answering machine message for a while as a kid. I did a Jimi Hendrix voice and said Ryan wasn’t here right now, so, uh, leave a message, and it was all a setup for Jimi to say, “excuse me, while I kiss the sky” before the beep.

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  • day 118: No Depression

    No Depression, by Uncle Tupelo*.

    Would you believe I didn’t remember this would be another cover of a cover before I did it? Singing the lyrics, I was a little like “Hmmmmm… this song is a wee bit evangelical and sounds a little more like an actual Americana song from the 1930s than a simulacrum of one from 1990.”

    Turns out, it’s a Carter Family number, which I probably knew somewhere in the deep recesses of my Doc Watson listening ears.

    Got annoyed with an “indie rock road trip” playlist in the car coming back from soccer with the 10yo and put on that Uncle Tupelo album instead; he goofed “toil and trouble” as “toilet trouble” and now I can’t unhear it.

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  • day 117: Don’t Fence Me In

    Don’t Fence Me In, by Roy Rogers*.

    I knew this first as a Riders in the Sky song, but I’m starting to wonder if Riders in the Sky might be the Jan & Dean to Sons of the Pioneers’ Beach Boys? If you get all of those references, our dads might have the same taste in music.

    [checks Wikipedia once]

    So, funny story, it turns out Cole Porter put this song together for a Roy Rogers movie, but the lyrics were very much by some cowboy poet out of Montana, and the studio et al screwed him out of a writing credit, because every stereotype about 1930s Hollywood is true.

    And then they used it in like three more Roy Rogers movies. I looked up one after reading the words “Trigger’s dance ends” in the stage direction for the chords and lyrics to this.

    [resists urge to look up how many horses really played Trigger]

    Oh, and more recently, Willie Nelson recorded it, too.

    //

    I’m probably singing it in the Riders style, but I added the silly Wildcat Kelly intro, which honestly doesn’t hold up too well, but when I looked it up to check if Wildcat Kelly happens to be some real person, I found Ella Fitzgerald singing this part, so it’s probably OK.

    Added a cheeky cowboy solo, but I’m tired.

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  • day 115: Farewell Transmission

    Farewell Transmission, by Songs: Ohia.

    It didn’t take that many days, after all. But, I’m late, by about 100 minutes for the first time in the project on day 115, for a good reason.

    the real truth about it is

    no one gets it right

    the real truth about it is

    we’re all supposed to try

    This song is in part yet another cover of a cover, because I heard it first by Waxahatchee & Kevin Morby, and it blew me away, and it came with a story about Jason Molina and Songs: Ohia, which I had never heard, and then I did, and man oh man, either version of this song gives me chills every damn time.

    I spent… a lot of time on this one today, and the edit is still a mess, including a “crap the computer went to sleep and this is the third different way I’m supposed to sing this part” video edit. And I REALLY need to learn how to splice loops properly so they don’t slip out of sync HOW IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE idk idk idk.

    But I love it anyway.

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  • day 109: Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain

    Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain, by Willie Nelson.

    Looking this song up recently, I learned that Hank Williams sang it, and Willie didn’t write it, which was a surprise, given its slot on Red Headed Stranger, and RHS being a real live concept album, but OK, country music, keep on surprising me.

    I talked about this album and what I associate with it wayyyy back on day 26.

    //

    Kept it simple tonight, but still took three takes to get the little chunka-chunka-chunk runs… well, still not quite right, but it’s good enough for tonight.

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  • day 77: The Man Who Couldn’t Cry

    The Man Who Couldn’t Cry, by Johnny Cash (and Loudon Wainwright III).

    When I started this project, I didn’t know how many covers-of-covers would be involved, nor would I have expected to play three Loudon Wainwright III songs in the first 77 days, but here we are, because it really might be the fourth Johnny Cash song, depending on how we’re classifying these things.

    I am a pedant when it comes to taxonomy, but part of the fun of this project is playing and singing songs I have always wanted to play and sing, and another part of the fun has turned out to be finding inspiration in the (heavily curated and crafted by my own habits) serendipity of the music that pops onto Spotify in the car on the way back from soccer practice or while I’m making breakfast, and just reflecting back the soundtrack of my day.

    This song (the original) came on today as we left the parking lot at soccer practice, and I made the 10-year-old listen a little, and maybe it was the rain, or maybe he was curious, or maybe he happened to drift into his own world right then, or replay the goal he scored, or maybe it really was the rain, but he seemed to be listening, didn’t complain, and didn’t reflexively chime in with his own pedantry about the impossibility of the lyrics.

    Or maybe I just tuned him out. 😉

    Kept it bare bones tonight, though I did have to tune up out of the weird Pavement stuff from yesterday.

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  • day 68: In The Pines

    In The Pines, by The Louvin Brothers.

    You probably know the Leadbelly version of this, or at least the Nirvana (Unplugged) cover of that one, which you should hear, if somehow you haven’t. I don’t even know which I heard first or how the heck I got into the Louvin Brothers, but I had this one album and played the heck out of this one song.

    “The longest train I ever saw
    was 19 coaches long
    The only girl I ever loved
    is on that train and gone.”

    That’s goddamn poetry right there.

    Once in New Mexico, at a small town bar with a live two-step band, I hollered something like “Y’ALL KNOW ANY LOUVIN BROTHERS?” Mind you, I’m pretty sure it was dinnertime, and I couldn’t have been that drunk. Yet. No one in the room had any idea what I was talking about, which is right and good and correct.

    //

    I tried a harmony on the 4th this time, and it’s present in the background somewhere, but mostly you’ll hear my whine an octave up, but that’s kinda fun, too. I looked up “bluegrass harmony” and accidentally downloaded an html file of what I guess isn’t much of a website anymore, and learned that bluegrass vocal harmonies should stay pretty close to the lead, but idk if that means I should sing just like a full step up or down, which seems weird, but we’ve established I don’t know what I’m doing with the harmony.

    Plinky second guitar to give the vaguest impression that I’ve ever heard a mandolin before.

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  • day 53: Down In The River To Pray

    Down In The River To Pray, Traditional, in the style of Alison Krauss.

    https://twitter.com/ryansholin/status/1346907288175599619

    Me: Hmm, I’ll hold on to this acapella song on my list for a day when I need something quiet.

    The universe: Cool, you can slip on the ice today and maybe break a wrist.

    Can’t play guitar today and I really need to sleep, and I still don’t really know how to sing harmonies, but my wife gave me a clue about singing the thirds or fifths in between the third and fourth tracks of vocals here, and I figured out that I can sing along to a sort of organ drone track in the right key and then delete the track, which is mind-opening for sure, but also had already recorded it in a wavering key that completely changes a couple verses in (not intentional), so this is what you get.

    I warned you there would be more from O Brother Where Are Thou, and this song has an intriguing little history, but a lot of Southern-ish Spirituals-ish songs do.

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  • day 46: I Ride An Old Paint

    I Ride An Old Paint, Traditional, as by Riders In The Sky.

    I don’t know this one as a Johnny Cash song, or a Linda Rondstadt song; I just know it as a cowboy song recorded by the silliest western group this side of Sesame Street: Riders In The Sky.

    I’ve been nursing the same poor Riders CD for more than 20 years, I am sure of it, but I first heard them on public radio — WLRN 91.3 in Miami, after my parents split up and my dad didn’t get a television.

    Public radio was the soundtrack of the every other weekend I spent with him, in his apartment, in his car (when it wasn’t Paul Simon or Steve Miller — but those tapes peaked before those years, I think), in thunderstorms on the Intracoastal, or on perfect days driving down to Miami Beach and back along A1A because it was easier than thinking of something else to do.

    Our local NPR station was the place I heard real live blues — Ruth Brown — and the place I heard “country” music I didn’t hate — Riders Radio Theater. The goofy mystery segment was always appealing (with far, far less cynicism than Garrison Keillor, who I didn’t like until I was very much an adult, and then not for long, because ask not for whom the milkshake duck quacks…)

    That radio was also the place I really heard (and felt) jazz for the first time, Miles Davis’s Nefertiti on one of those car rides south, but that’s not this story.

    ~~~

    Oh, so, I got that little MIDI keyboard in the mail today, and after a little bit of frustration (the real cause of the delay was the Bluetooth headphones, natch), I enjoyed the heck out of playing the software drums, bass, and piano on it.

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