Welcome to this week’s edition of Original Wednesday! Today, I bring you “Gonna Be There,” a song from MoU’s latest release, Homestead’s Revenge, that Jim and I cowrote. As a special treat, Jim is also playing here and does a great rendition of his guitar solo. But, you really have to listen to the real version to fully appreciate it… and you can do that by going to http://jimfusco.com/albums.html !
Stay tuned for another all-new post from Jeff tomorrow, as “session-a-day” rolls on at https://guitarbucketlist.com !
Hello and welcome to the “Title Tracks Week” edition of the Laptop Sessions! Today, I’m proud to pull one out of the archives, dust it off, and present it to you in all its laptop camera – recorded glory… This is the title track from my 2005 album Looking For You – click here to listen!. “Looking For You” is one of only three songs (all included on that album) that I’ve released with drums included in the mix. At the time, Jim officially produced three tracks off the album for me and they are, by far, the standout tracks! With his help and musicianship, I was able to include percussion and background vocals like no other song I had previously released. To this day, I still remember the hours I spent teaching him the songs and learning what I could from his recording style.
“Looking For You” quickly became one of the staples of our band at the time, the trio “Chris, Jim, and Becky.” We played coffee houses and open mic nights, and this song seemed to fit amongst our rather acoustic fare. For whatever reason, I had a hell of a time remembering the words though, so there are some embarrassing live tracks floating around out there. But there is a really great recording of it on our only release as a trio, appropriately titled Live in the Studio – click here to listen!.
Then, in 2006, MoU began recording their debut album – click here to listen!, again with a “live in the studio” sound. Looking for standards that we were comfortable playing, “Looking For You” made the final cut. This, I think, is the definitive version. Years of playing this song finally gelled on this recording, as the three of us were joined by Mike Fusco on drums and Cliff Huizenga on bass.
As a final note, I must admit that I have purposely pushed this song out of our set lists as of late. The reason is certainly not that I don’t like the song; the length of this post should refute that suggestion! (In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever told anyone before, but this was the first harmonica solo I ever played on my own and it really marked the beginning of that instrument in my music.) I’ve felt that the words of the song get buried in a live, electric rock setting, and that’s the real reason it’s been passed over recently. Playing it again tonight was a blast!
I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you’ll come back to https://guitarbucketlist.com tomorrow for an all-new “Title Track” Laptop Session from Jeff Copperthite… it’s sure to be a great one!
Hello and welcome to my first Original Wednesday since Christmas Eve! This is an exciting week for me, as I’m off from work. There have been plenty of things to keep me busy — really, too many to list — but I woke up this morning and, despite the work I should be doing, I decided to work out this song and record it for tonight’s session.
The song is called “Transitions” and this is a Laptop Sessions world premiere. It may make it to my next album, it may not… Only time will tell! I hope you like it. This is the first fully recorded version of it, so it’s a demo of sorts. It’s not perfectly arranged yet, to be sure, but I’m pretty happy with the overall structure of it. Some of the words may change, some of the rough edges will be smoothed out, but this is your sneak peak at the first complete version of it. I messed around with the harmonica even after I finished recording this video, and I have to say that this song has (and/or will have) one of my favorite harmonica parts that I’ve written in a very long time. It’s a very deliberate aspect, but not so note-for-note that it sounds scripted.
Outside of writing and recording this song, I’ve been busy during my February break with some grading for my classes, jury duty yesterday (I was released after “a day’s service”), preparing logs for my BEST portfolio, reading three things (Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Pro Wrestling, and the 40-page booklet to the Sam Jones film I Am Trying to Break Your Heart), and listening to several albums, including MoU’s Homestead’s Revenge (I think “Worlds Apart” is my favorite song we’ve ever done!), Pearl Jam’s Binaural, and Dan Auerbach’s Keep It Hid. Oh, and I can’t forget to mention my favorite playlist that I referred to in Monday’s post — the “Albums of 2008” iTunes playlist. Good stuff all around…
We’ve gotten a decent number of views to the blog for the chords and cover video of Dan Auerbach’s “My Last Mistake.” That’s exciting because I wasn’t sure what to expect with this fairly obscure song choice. It’s all the more incentive for me to keep on top of new rock music, bringing whatever I can to the blog as my contribution to this, the best acoustic cover song blog in the universe! No kidding!
Okay, that’s it for me for this week. But, even as I write that, I’ll be back to choose and post a Guest Session for Friday. We’re accepting submissions every day, so don’t wait — record a video on YouTube and send the link to us today with an interesting description.
Welcome to my all-new edition of Original Wednesday here at the Laptop Sessions. This week, I have chosen “Words,” a song I’ve recorded twice over the years — once for my album Looking For You (I recorded the title track for my last Original Wednesday video blog) and again on the Chris, Jim, & Becky debut album Live in the Studio. After recording a new cover song music video every three days, it’s always a lot of fun to turn to my own catalog of songs and revisit songs I haven’t played in years or ones I play all the time on my own. That’s the concept behind the Original Wednesday tradition — allow the members of Fusco-Moore Productions to showcase our pride and joy, our own music.
“Words” inspired the early sketches for a script and some unscripted scenes filmed while Jim and I were on vacation in Massachusetts. The basic premise of the movie was two characters on a journey who disagree on the essential question, what is a more important/effective form of communication — music and sound or words and written forms? For those who know me, it won’t come as a surprise that my character (the Eli mentioned in this song) believes in the power of words to express that which we as humans are simply unable to communicate to each other. Jim’s character (named Brian, if my memory serves me well…) believed less in the ability of mere words to convey the complex emotions we have. Nothing ever or probably ever will come of it, but it was great fun to revisit the song and the concepts.
I’ve written very little about Eli as a character — really only these lyrics — but I’ve always liked him. I hope you do too! As a songwriter, I always wished I could have written more into the song or additional songs, but I think this says enough on its own.
Well, I hope you enjoy this one. If it doesn’t whet your appetite, then don’t forget to rush back tomorrow for Jeff’s all-new Laptop Session as session-a-day rolls on for all 366 days of the year 2008…
