“Depending On You” (Tom Petty cover)

By Jim Fusco:

Oh yeah- welcome to the new and improved Laptop Sessions website!  What, you don’t notice a visual difference?  Well, great!

The only thing you should notice is how much faster the site is running and will continue to run.  Our sitemapt program is chugging away and our site will be running at tip-top shape so we won’t have to turn those short-attention-span visitors away.  You know on the Internet crowd only gives you like ten seconds before they get bored and leave.  This morning, while we were still on our other server, I waited 26 seconds for the front page to load.  Now, at least on my machine, it’s almost instant.  And if I want to speed it up even more, I can fully transfer the domain to the new HostGator servers.

On to today’s video!

Chris and I wanted to do this song for so long, but never got a chance until recently.  I love this tune, as I do with all the songs off of “Full Moon Fever”, and thought it would be great with that cool chorus riff and the harmonies on the bridge.  So, of course, this has quickly become one of my favorite Laptop Sessions acoustic rock cover songs and I hope it’s one of yours, too!

I expect to do most of the songs off of “Full Moon Fever” in the future (except for maybe “Zombie Zoo”) because whenever I hear it, it just sounds like “growing up”.  The album came out when I was very little, but we always listened to it in the car alongside the Traveling Wilburys.  No “Wheels on the Bus” for us!

And how about Jeff’s video yesterday?  Impressive, I must say.  His voice was so sweet and it was a really good song, too.  I think what I loved about the video the most was the easy-going flow of the song and Jeff’s performance.

You should really check it out!  Enjoy the newer, faster Laptop Sessions website, as we continue our quest to solidify our spot as the greatest music video blog of all time!

More Laptop Sessions covers

“Learning To Fly” (Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers Cover)

By Jeff Copperthite:

Good evening, and welcome to your Sunday edition of The Laptop Sessions. I’ve got another great song to add to our growing library, and it’s our 2nd song from Tom Petty.

From his 1991 album “Into the Great Wide Open”, the song I have performed is “Learning To Fly”. While simple, the song has been popular since the album’s release. The song has a great set of lyrics and is about a time that Tom saw an interview of a pilot, who said “Learning to fly is easy, but coming down is the hard part”, hence the chorus inspiration.

We are playing all kinds of songs and we had a practice session at my condo today. My fingers look like they are blowing bubbles, after practicing on the bass for 3 hours today w/ Chris, Jim, and Mike.

Stay tuned for more great sessions by Jim.

Editor’s Note: Unfortunately, Jeff’s acoustic cover song music videos are no longer on YouTube, but we decided to keep his cover song blog posts up.  We figured these music blog entries would be good for posterity’s sake and because Jeff always gave such insightful posts each Session.  We hope to see Jeff’s impressive catalog of acoustic rock songs here on the Laptop Sessions cover songs and origianal music blog again in the future.  But, for now, please make sure to check-out hundreds of other acoustic cover songs from all of your favorite bands here on the Laptop Sessions music blog!

More Laptop Sessions covers

“Echo” (Tom Petty Cover)

By Chris Moore:

Welcome back to another edition of the Laptop Sessions!

One of my favorite Tom Petty albums is the little-known 1999 album Echo. I found it used in an FYE about a year ago, and although it may not be his best album ever, it immediately grew on me. There are some really great tracks on it (out of 15 tracks, you’d hope so!), including the title track that I’m playing here. It took me a bit of practice to be comfortable playing this song without a cheat sheet in front of me — certainly not for the chords, but for the words, which change every chorus. In the end, it was a lot of fun, and I’ve been playing it pretty much every day since I recorded it.

Some day, I might get up the “balls” (as Tom Petty might sing) to play “Rhino Skin,” one of the best tracks on the album. Take a listen to it some time, and maybe you’ll see why I’m not quite there yet… 🙂

Don’t forget to check out more great Laptop Sessions from Jeff and Jim- and then [insert: Arnold Schwarzenegger voice] I’ll be back!

More Laptop Sessions covers