‘neath your covers, part 1

While supplies last we will be giving away (that means free, no charge) a 5 song bonus EP with every purchase of the One Soul Now CD.

The EP is entitled ‘neath your covers, part 1 and includes 5 cover songs that we have recorded. The songs are: Thunder Road by Bruce Springsteen; 17 Seconds by the Cure; Lungs by Townes Van Zandt; Darkness, Darkness by The Youngbloods and Helpless by Neil Young.

Each of these songs has a history with us. Some of the histories are personal and others are circumstantial. But, however the song came onto our radar screen, it is now a part of our story.

Thunder Road
In case you haven’t figured it out by now, we are huge Springsteen fans and have been for many, many years. We have covered a couple of his songs in the past (State Trooper on Whites Off Earth Now!! and My Fathers House during the Trinity Session tour, available as a hidden track on Rarities, B Sides and Slow Sad Waltzes CD) and we will no doubt cover more in the future. We first took a stab at covering Thunder Road while we were working on songs for The Caution Horses LP. We didn’t get too far with it back then. When we were preparing to go out on the OpenRoad tour we decided to take another crack at it and this time it stuck. We played it most nights. While recording One Soul Now we decided to take a couple of loose passes at Thunder Road and we were lucky to have captured a version that we liked. I think the opening verse of this song is one of the best ever written.

17 Seconds
We were approached to do a song for a Cure tribute album. Alan and I were big Cure fans in the early eighties and the album 17 Seconds was a very seminal album for us. So we worked up an arrangement of 17 Seconds for the tribute album. That project fell through, but we still had our version. This was recorded during a One Soul Now session. We rolled tape as we fooled around with an arrangement …this is what we got….it sounds nothing like the original and we love it.

Lungs
We toured with Townes Van Zandt during The Caution Horses tour. We loved him and we love his music. He is one of the greatest songwriters to have ever lived. We’ve been performing Lungs off and on over the years and it has always been one of our favourite Townes’ songs. This version was recorded many years ago at Jeff Birds house when we were recording Neil Young’s song Tired Eyes for a Neil Young Tribute album. But this is the first time it has seen the light of day. It’s a very cool recording with Jeff adding a peculiarly, singular background vocal and percussion track.

Darkness, Darkness
We got a call from Hollywood. Some movie guy on the other end of the line said that James Cameron was making an IMAX movie about the Titanic and they were looking for someone to cover a Youngbloods song called Darkness, Darkness. In true Hollywood fashion they pleaded a meager budget (JAMES FUCKING CAMERON IS PLEADING POVERTY!!!!!) and asked us to do the demo free of charge. Whatever, we were already recording and set up, so we said yes and took a crack at it. Long story short, they didn’t like our version…..it strayed too far from the original. We liked it. It’s got some killer accordion and electric guitar drones and the groove is soooo heavy…….but it aint no Celine Dion.

Helpless
The only musician that is more influential to us than Bruce Springsteen is Neil Young. We’ve been listening to him forever. The first song I ever learnt on guitar was Helpless. It was also the first time Margo sang a song to my strumming. We first performed this song in the mid-nineties when we were asked to be the band that played at the Governor Generals awards ceremony honouring Neil Young. The Governor Generals Awards are much like the Kennedy Center awards. They are given to Canadians who have contributed the most in their particular artistic field. For us it was a huge honour to be chosen to perform for Neil Young on that occasion. During the Open tour we dusted off the song and worked up a slightly different arrangement. When we first set up our studio to start recording One Soul Now, we tested out the equipment with Helpless. The equipment worked.