1. Pick a country song or songs to cover.
2. Cover them in any way you'd like. Hell, turn them into another genre if you like. Turn a country song into reggae or soul or metal. Or cover them in your own version of country.
3. Email me when your song or songs are complete.
4. I intended to post everything on the night of Friday, September 9th but got it all posted the following day. Hey, better late than never.
Project 19: Country Covers
Tom Stromsodt’s covers
The Christian Life is by The Louvin Brothers. Don’t miss your water is by Otis Redding. They are back to back on The Byrds Sweetheart of the Rodeo album, which has a top 5 album cover if you’re into that sort of thing. J plays on don’t miss your water. We did guitars and vocals live. Everything was one take.
Luckenbach. They said it couldn’t be done! Maybe it was shouldn’t…
Barrett Haroldson’s cover
Cattle Call has such a great cinematic quality, I love the yodeling cowboy production of the original track. I set out to make a version that captured this moment of late-summer-county-fair vibe. At The House on the Rock in Wisconsin, there are animatronic / player piano / calliope rooms that create these hauntingly beautiful carnivalesque performances. Those inspired the instrumentation and other choices. I poured on the layers of reverb and wobble which gave it more of a haunting feel.
Kelly Duclos’ cover
It's good to be back in the basement! Here's a good old fashioned drinkin' tune featuring some mediocre lap steel which was fun to work through. Took probably 13 - 14 empty bottles and about 75 takes, ha! I know the tune from The Byrds Sweetheart of the Rodeo and I'm pretty sure that's Gram Parsons on vocals. Good stuff!
Eric “Czahr” Scott’s cover
If you haven't explored Lee Hazlewood, or are only familiar with his great work with Nancy Sinatra, do yourself a favor and dig around his 60's and 70's catalog of solo albums. It's not all great, and some is awful, but there are gems. For this cover, I didn’t bother with the entire first half of the original because it's Lee telling a Tarzan and Jane story. While the story is funny and excellent social commentary about dumb people, I was only interested in the song itself. I de-countrified it and went for a straightforward pop-rock sort of thing with just two different guitar tracks, one vocal track and a robot drummer.
Bill Fricke’s covers
Wolverton Mountain - Claude King via Southern Culture on the Skids
I own the original album, but it was the cover by SCotS that caught my attention. This is pretty much a cover of a cover, with a little more old timey rock n roll feel.
Wrecking Ball - Neil Young via Emmylou Harris
This is country adjacent because of Emmylou’s cover of it on Wrecking Ball, produced by Daniel Lanois. This is again a cover of a cover with more country flavor. I had just purchased a lap steel and couldn’t wait to use it with a lot of reverb and delay.
Grant Eull’s covers
One old, one newish … as country music was never a go to style of music for me - but when Toby Keith’s opened in St Louis Park I’d go see live country bands twang out on Telecasters and my appreciation for the genre grew quickly. These two songs explicitly pay tribute to that personal journey for me. I too like to drink beer from a mason jar. Cheers.
Noah Warren’s cover
It’s a simple tune with a sparse and blatant truthiness to it. Yum.
I had an idea to David Bowie-ize Dolly Parton.
Halfway through I realized this makes no sense, David Bowie wouldn’t sing a song like this
but it was too late to turn back. I threw it together in-between breaks from this design bootcamp
I’m in, which is slowly driving me crazy.
I swapped out a bunch of different synth pads and settled on ones like: “Aurora over Iceland”, Antarctic Sun and “70’s Classic Synth Bass”
Neil once shared a slowed down version of Jolene with me and what was amazing about that was how
pitch perfect Dolly was with each note- there’s a lot happening vocally within a Dolly Parton song that I usually miss at normal speed.
Anyway, this was a fun way to honor Queen Elizabeth’s passing.
KC Mc Kee’s cover
Here is my submission for the Country & Western project: the song "Crazy", written by the legendary songwriter, actor, and cannabis advocate Willie Nelson. Recorded in a single take at the piano pictured below.
Jeff Kearn’s covers
As a kid I saw this sci fi movie on tv where a little spaceship was slowly leaving the mothership while The Most Beautiful Girl was playing. The strange combination left a lasting imprint. Of what I'm not sure. Maybe the "sitting in a tin can" feeling. Dudes fucking up in the 70's. Somehow it felt right to go right into George Jones. Leaning into sadness country. Kinda funny though too
Neil Fasen’s cover
I wasn’t exposed to much country music in my youth, except Kenny Rogers. I have memories of sitting on the floor of my family’s living room, playing with Lincoln Logs while Kenny Rogers was playing on the radio. Most of Kenny’s music consisted of cheesy love songs, but three dark tunes stuck out to me: Coward of the County, Ruby, and Lucille. I picked Lucille for this project, as it was a bit shorter than Coward and less politically incorrect than Ruby. Tom helped out with drums and lap steel.
Seth Hogan’s cover
I learned the Chip Young guitar part and built the track around that, letting my vocal limitations do the heavy lifting.