Project 20: Twenty Years Ago

Kelly Duclos creates a medley of Tom Waits and Neko Case

No One Knows I'm Gone by Tom Waits and Ghost Wiring and Outro With Bees by Neko Case. Here's a real "sketchy" medley featuring a loop of my son, Henry, playing floor tom and tambourine in 3/4 time which we recorded a couple of years ago during a family jam. I fed the loop out of GarageBand to my 4 track for each of the 3 tunes then sent them back into GarageBand for rearranging, mixing and slight enhancements. Got a rare violin solo and some sweet found-sound noise of a pile fed folder at work squealing like hell. Some serendipitous Halloween vibes here.

Seth Hogan covers Fawn by Tom Waits

I first heard Tom Waits when I was in high school. This was before digital audio, and I recorded a radio broadcast of 'Nighthawks at the Diner' to cassette tape and listened to it over and over. That was a live album with Tom at the piano singing and telling stories. I got to see Waits at the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles in 1999. He was touring to support the album 'Mule Variations'. It was a great show. Waits was in top form and he spent time at the piano, as he always does.He has a sensitive and musical 'mom and pop' piano style, which I was feeling with this simple, one-take performance of the song 'Fawn' from his 2002 release, Alice. That track features David Hidalgo (Los Lobos, Latin Playboys) on violin and Waits on piano. My take is just solo piano.

Ian Royal covers Robot Parade by They Might Be Giants

Okay, I can never measure up to the OG version. Of course not. The first time I heard this song was live. I met up with a friend at a Mountain Goats show at the Varsity Theater. I believe it was when they were touring with Transcendental Youth. They had a horn section. When I got there I suddenly ran into all these people from my college era as well as my current work, none of whom I suspected were Mountain Goats fans. John Darnielle did an acoustic version of “You Were Cool” that, to this day, still gives me chills whenever I hear it. They saved “This Year” as a surprise encore but closed with "The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton." Everyone around me chanted along with John when he sang “Hail Satan…”, it was quite tremendous.

I really didn’t know what I was doing with this. I wanted to try and turn it into a standard polka song. It was hard because the lyrics kind of have their own rhythm- it got kind of country near the end. It’s a short song, so hopefully you won’t suffer too long through it!

Noah Warren covers The Best Ever Death Metal Band In Denton by The Mountain Goats

Neil Fasen covers It’s Summertime by the Flaming Lips

It’s not summertime. It’s almost winter, and the air is rapidly growing colder. For some reason this songs makes more sense to me this time of the year than it ever would during summertime. It’s a sad song. I believe it has something to do with the death of one of Wayne’s (lead singer’s) friends. With autumn and new school routines and activities, time was tight for music, but I was able to carve out a few evenings in the basement with my baritone uke, my Mustang bass, and my newly acquired Telecaster that I bought from Tom. (Thanks, Tom! I love it!)

Grant Eull covers Queens of the Stone Age and Beck

Colby Heston covers Go With The Flow by the Queens of the Stone Age

Bill Fricke covers Tom Waits

This one was a little difficult to find something to cover. Nothing really spoke to me immediately.  I had never heard Tom Waits’ “Alice” and it turned out to be a good inspiration.  Made into a staged play/musical, it was based on the relationship between Lewis Carroll and the real life inspiration for Alice in Wonderland.  Done in collaboration with Robert Wilson ,it was staged in Germany and there are some snippets online of performances.  They also collaborated on “The Black Rider” in 1992.

The problem is how to cover Tom Waits without trying to out Waits Waits?

Table Top Joe

The lyrics say it all. A dark, jazzy song.  Decided to lighten it up and see what it sounded like as little jauntier song, which then led to wanting to do a bad impression of Leon Redbone.

Kommienezuspadt

This one was fun to do. Sung mostly in faux German.  Kommienezuspadt roughly means “don’t ever be late” and Sie pünktlich roughly means “be punctual.” A nod to the March hare in Alice in Wonderland.

I recently started adding some analog gear to my little home studio (a nice new mic, along with a 500 series lunchbox with a pair of pres, EQs and compressors). After years and years of only really recording and mixing everything in the box, I am challenging myself to use outboard gear and proper mics. I also got myself a nifty reamp box to help me audition and track mics and my two amps in a couple different ways.

With all this fun new gear and no idea what I am trying to do, I decided to pick "You Think I Ain't Worth a Dollar But I Feel Like a Millionaire" to cover for my first entry into this Basement Sketches project because it has some very crunchy, mean guitars and it seemed like a great experiment to put new gear to the test. This is my first full, complete attempt at recording and mixing a song using primarily outboard gear - unless you count 4-track recordings from 20+ years ago.

While I am not especially happy with how this project turned out on the whole, I am very happy with the reamping/mic work I did on the rhythm guitar. As a bonus, I learned that the creator of the reamp box I recently acquired is none other than Eric Valentine - who produced this QOTSA record. What a weird coincidence.

In any case, here it is.

Welcome new Basement Sketch contributor, Jon Hart! Here’s his cover of You Think I Ain’t Worth A Dollar!