Tag: Bee Gees

MIXTAPE: Ana Egge’s Addiction to Melody

Posted on by Editor

One of my favorite things in life is hearing a song for the first time that I know I need to hear again, immediately! Something about the melody or the horn part or the harmony part that catches my ear and get’s stuck in my head. Whenever that happens it’s like I need to understand why it’s so infectious. Usually I end up getting out my guitar and learning the song. It’s always fascinating to get inside a song that someone else has written. It’s a magical way to know someone. Feeling how and why they drop the beat going into the chorus or how they hold a chord longer into the bridge that gives it that special something. Here’s a short list of songs that have affected me this way over the years. — Ana Egge

Flo Morrissey & Matthew E. White, written by Kyle Field – “Look at What the Light Did Now”

My friend Mike Ferrio (Good Luck Mountain) put this as the last tune on a mixtape CD for me a few years ago. I learned it and kept showing it to all of my musician friends.

The Zombies, written by Chris White – “This Will Be Our Year”

I heard this on a TV show I think, can’t remember which one. I had no idea who it was by and I was surprised to find out how long ago it was released. It sounded so fresh! The instrumentation, the sounds, the delivery. And I still can’t get over the incredible chord progression.

The Be Good Tanyas, written by Berzilla Wallin – “Rain and Snow”

I grew up with The Grateful Dead version of this song. I just love how Frazey adds the oooh oooh‘s onto the end of the word snow. Such a great soulful addition and original interpretation of this classic murder ballad.

Phoenix, written by Christian Mazzalai – “1901”

What’s not to love about this song? I can’t sit still when it comes on. I love how they play off the beat so much!

Dengue Fever – “Tip My Canoe”

I’ve probably listened to this song more than anything other song since I got a Dengue Fever two-disc collection at a record store in Toronto on tour a few years back. It’s SO delicious and trippy and great everyday.

The Shins, written by James Mercer – “New Slang”

Such a beautiful melody and evocative lyrics. I don’t always necessarily understand what he means to say, but I feel it.

Antony & The Johnsons, written by Anohni – “My Lady Story”

Oh my god, so beautiful! Beautiful and intense and unique.

Bee Gees, written by Barry & Robin Gibb – “To Love Somebody”

One of my very favorite songs ever. How much better can a song be? They nailed it.

Gnarls Barkley – “Crazy”

Oh that dropped beat. And the melody! So cool how it builds and such a killer chorus.

Amy Winehouse – “You Know I’m No Good”

Incredible personal songwriting. So unflinching and honest and melodic. And such an upbeat feeling while being so depressing. Amazing.

Bon Iver, written by Justin Vernon – “Skinny Love”

I learned this to sing at my friends wedding a few years back. Once again, just magical what an original artist express when they have an inspired idea and melody over Am and C, y’all!

Kimya Dawson – “Anthrax”

I moved to NYC right after 9/11 and went to a talent hour type show. Burlesque and poets and then Kimya Dawson got up and sang a few songs. Her band The Moldy Peaches had recently broken up (I hadn’t heard of them). I bought every home-burned CD she was selling and loved them all. But this song about 9/11 is just brilliant.

Elizabeth Cotten – “Freight Train”

I don’t remember how I old I was when I first heard this song. But I do remember feeling like I’d always known it. It’s damn near perfect. Beyond the truth and depth of experience expressed in this song, I really love the big move to the E major in the key of C.

Photo credit: Shervin Lainez

Six of the Best: Weird and Wonderful Bluegrass Covers

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

It’s a big month for bluegrass covers. Chatham County Line revealed some of their biggest musical influences (and favourite songs to soundcheck to) when they released Sharing The Covers, their eighth studio album, with arrangements of Beck, John Lennon, Mick Jagger, Tom Petty and Wilco, to name a few. It’s a record that will present the warm glow of familiarity to all those pickers who cut their banjo teeth on Beatles and Stones songs – and which among us has never heard “Norwegian Wood” floating across the festival field at 2am?

Meanwhile The Cleverlys – the reigning kings of the bluegrass pop cover – are putting the Beyoncé back in bluegrass on their latest album, not to mention the Bieber and the LMFAO. Call them a novelty act, call them comedians, but there’s plenty of merit in their musicality – and there’s something about their Ozark twist on Kelis’s “Milkshake” that’s going to stay with you ’til the day you die.

For more envelope-pushing, boundary-breaking, what-were-they-thinking-please-don’t-let-it-stop covers, check out our picks below.

“Super Freak” (Rick James) — Ricky Skaggs & Bruce Hornsby

This one’s a winner from the very first line. Sure, Ricky Skaggs has never let his own freak flag fly, but hearing him sing the words “She’s a very kinky girl” somehow gives you hope that one day, the divide in America might be healed. It’s a nice antidote to all those bluegrass songs about dear, dead old mothers, and one you suspect might have brought on their demise in the first place. Hang on in there for the slick modulation in the final instrumental…

“Price Tag” (Jessie J) — Keller Williams & The Travelin’ McCourys

Presumably this is a song that resonates with bluegrassers – since no one’s in this music for the ker-ching ker-ching or the ber-bling ber-bling. Plus, if the sound of Jason Carter jumping in on the chorus to sing ‘it ain’t about the money-money-money’ doesn’t flood you with instant joy then you may want to get your frontal lobe checked out. We picture him practicing his harmonies as he bumps along on the bus next to Del, trying to explain who Jessie J is. Actually that raises the question – how the heck did he know?

“Piece of My Heart” (Jerry Ragovoy and Bert Berns) — John Hartford

Notable not so much for its inclusion on Hartford’s 1984 album Gum Canoe, but for the rare music video he later shot to accompany it. The man might have been a creative genius on a par with xxx, but there’s something about his black-box realization of this ’67 soul number that’s creepy AF. The Beckettian close-ups of his lips and eyes are made even more sinister by his customary bowler-hat and vest, which here take on a distinctly Clockwork Orange feel. “Break it! Break another little piece of my heart now baby,” sings the dead-eyed droog, as he contemplates his next bout of ultraviolence.

“Honky Cat” (Elton John) — Country Gazette

How can a bluegrass cover be even better than the original – especially when the original is Elton fricking John? And yet this funky upbeat string version was surely what John and Bernie Taupin really heard in their head when they composed the song in 1972. Alan Munde, Byron Berline and the boys were quick to recognize the song’s “redneck” sensibility, recording their cover within the year on Don’t Give Up Your Day Job.

“Stayin’ Alive” (Bee Gees) — Les Claypool’s Duo De Twang

Sure, covering the Bee Gees’ most famous disco number isn’t new. But the mean-and-dirty take Claypool manages to get on it sure is. The Primus bassist manages to turn the ultimate floorfiller – a song as familiar and family-friendly as your dad’s station wagon – into something frantically alien. It’s compelling, unnerving, and completely unclassifiable. Somebody help him please.

“Downtown” (Macklemore & Ryan Lewis) — LBB & The Fancies

If you’re going to parody a major rapper’s already-pretty-nutso music video – one that includes a guy riding a chariot made of four motorcycles – you’re going to have to bring it. But fair play, Laura Bell Bundy did just that. Her loving bluegrass homage to Macklemore’s epic has everything from flat-footing and line-dancing to a honey hanging off a tractor. Even better, when they sing “whitewalls on the wheels like mayonnaise” there’s actually someone eating mayonnaise. Macklemore didn’t have that.

 

That Ain’t Bluegrass: Love Canon

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Artist: Love Canon
Song: “Islands In The Stream” (Originally recorded by Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton)
Album: Cover Story

My first question is normally, “Where did you first hear the song?” But with a song as ubiquitous as this, how could anyone actually recall when they first heard it? So, maybe a better question is: How did you all decide that this was a song you wanted to record?

Jesse Harper: I’ve always loved the song, for as long as I can remember, but at a truck stop somewhere we got a Bee Gees greatest hits record and there was a live version of “Islands In The Stream” on it. I was like, “This is ridiculous! Why would the Bee Gees cover a Dolly Parton/Kenny Rogers number?” When we looked it up, it was Barry Gibb and his brothers who wrote the tune and he produced Kenny Rogers’ record, brought Dolly in on it, and pitched the tune to Kenny. It was the Bee Gees that brought the song back to my memory.

I worked it up when I was teaching at a fiddle camp in the summer, on an island, and it just happened that my friend Lauren Balthrop, who sings it with me [on the record], was on this island. I wanted to sing the song as a camp sing-along, because I was teaching a vocals/choir class and she was helping me out. I brought it back to the [band], like, “Man, this is an ‘80s hit, let’s do it.” That’s how it all came about.

What makes this song a good bluegrass song — or a good fit for bluegrass instrumentation?

There’s not much of a departure, music-wise, from what they had. The things that usually work about a song are whether or not we can transcribe the parts and work them out on our instruments. When we get into a song, we put it under the microscope and find every little detail. We try it on every instrument to see which should play which part. This one, in particular, there weren’t that many parts to it; the vocal part is what stands out. It’s more of a bluegrass jam than a lot of things that we do, towards the end of the song and it was more about the chords and the melody than the parts. In certain songs where there’s an instrumental hook, or a synth part — or think about “Africa” [by Toto] and how many parts are immediately recognizable. This tune, the recognizable part is the chorus and its melody.

One of the differences to our approach is that bluegrass music is typically a [2/4 time] feel or a waltz feel, and there’s a scripted role for every instrument, but we approach it with the instruments we already have and the music that already exists and the roles just need someone to fill them. Rather than just taking the chord structure and make it bluegrass, we take all the music that’s there and figure out how to deal with it. It always feels cheesy to me to take a song and just turn it into a bluegrass feel. “Boom-chick” works for disco, maybe, but it wouldn’t work for any of the other feels that we do.

There’s been this tradition since the early days of bluegrass of taking songs that were pop hits or radio hits and bringing them to bluegrass audiences–

Like Bill Monroe covering a Jimmie Rodgers tune.

Exactly. So I wonder how what Love Canon does follows that tradition — and why do you think this tradition still exists today?

I think that it goes beyond bluegrass. I would say that all musicians who are involved or dedicated to the craft of learning their instrument will almost always have to learn a piece, like in classical music — classical music is almost exclusively covers. The London Philharmonic, for example, is really a cover band, if you think about it in those terms. Jazz groups that are playing standards, well, standards are just covers. They’re tunes that become vehicles for improvisation. Bluegrass music and acoustic music that uses bluegrass instrumentation deserve to be elevated to the place where jazz and classical are, because of the technical aspect that’s required.

If you watch Bryan Sutton or David Grier play the guitar it’s every bit as impressive as seeing Eliot Fisk, or some amazing classical guitar player. It takes a lifetime of dedication to the craft. Or you see Béla Fleck play the banjo, or Jim Mills, and you realize, “Man that takes a lifetime of learning that craft.” I feel that ‘80s music is worthy of being played on these instruments. The melodies are great, the compositions are great. When we dig into the actual tune, as students of music, there’s so much amazing information, harmonically, in the chords and the melodies, that are sort of lacking in radio music right now. The popular music of today is not what it was in the ‘80s. What I wanted to uncover through what Love Canon — canon of course, being a body of work —  is, “We are studying the canon of this particular era.” There were just some great songs!

Similarly, “Islands In The Stream” is a great piece of music with great lyrics and a great chorus. That’s worthy of being studied by any serious musician, including bluegrass musicians.

What’s your favorite thing about performing it live?

Watching people unable to sing the verses, but as soon as the choruses come around, everybody knows it. It’s like, everyone remembers it, but they don’t know why they remember it. It happens with a lot of the songs we play. “Break My Stride” by Matthew Wilder is a perfect example. Nobody knows what the hell is going on. They’re like, “Why do I know this?” And if you look at their faces, they’re like, “Aaaah, I know what this is? I know what this is?” Then as soon as the chorus comes, they throw their hands in the air and they know all the words.

Now, you know that ain’t bluegrass, right?

I mean, I know that it’s not. Absolutely it’s not bluegrass. One response I have is that I love the old bluegrass. I love J.D. Crowe, I love Ricky Skaggs. I listen to that music incessantly, but I’m not Ricky Skaggs and I’m not J.D. Crowe. And I’m never going to be them. It’s never going to happen, no matter how much I want it to. The best I could do would be equivalent to me putting on a fake British accent right now. So the best thing for me to do is to use the voice that I have and play the music that I’m… you know, decently prepared to play.

I remember sitting at a festival not far from where I grew up — I could ride my bike there from my house as a kid. This festival is more traditional and I remember seeing Nickel Creek there years and years ago and there was a woman seated in front of me who turned to the person seated next to her and said, “They’re good, but I hate it.” [Laughs] I dunno if you’re going to win that conversation. Maybe the problem extends wider, into our entire culture, but it doesn’t do me any good to have that argument. I usually just say, “Yeah, it’s definitely not bluegrass.”