By Chris Moore:
There’s only one day left after today for our latest edition of “New Bands Week.” It’s always sad to see it go… Now, in the past, we have unofficially extended our New Band Weeks by quite a few days, fishing deep into our reserves to find songs from new and different artists. I wonder if Jim and Jeff plan to surprise us with acoustic covers of new bands even after Sunday…
Unfortunately, I’ll be breaking that trend by Monday, when I post my 100th Laptop Session! I wanted to make it a special one, so I have chosen — and no one can convince me otherwise — to perform barenaked. Oops, that was a typo. I meant to write “Barenaked” with a capital “B.” My bad. My 100th session will be “Break Your Heart” by the Barenaked Ladies. This is one of my all-time favorite songs, ever since Jim played it for me a few years ago. I love everything about it — the lyrics, the concept, the emotion expressed, and most of all, Steven Page’s vocal performance. Now, I’ll admit that this song is a bit out of my comfort zone. And I spent about an hour tonight practicing and perfecting my performance and running my voice ragged and to the edge. Will this be my best acoustic cover music video ever? Probably not. But, will it set the bar higher for my next 100 session? Absolutely!
But, that’s enough about my next session. I should probably write at least a little bit about my cover tonight…
Before New Bands Week started, we each signed up for bands we planned to cover. I had signed up for Jimi Hendrix, Billy Bragg & Wilco, and John Denver. Then, I jumped the gun and released a Jimi Hendrix cover a few weeks ago. That left me with two. I recorded “Walt Whitman’s Niece” by Billy Bragg & Wilco for my Tuesday session, so that left John Denver. And I truly planned on recording a Denver song.
But it was not meant to be. Instead, I’m bringing you a Billboard Hot 100 top twenty song. This is Duncan Sheik’s “Barely Breathing,” a song that I’ve been practicing and wanting to record for a couple months. Tonight, finally, I pulled it out, dusted it off, and I hope you enjoy it. It really is one of those songs that received a ridiculous amount of radio airplay when I used to listen to it, but it absolutely deserved it. It was easy to learn, had some interesting chord patterns, and this was probably one of the most fun recording sessions I’ve had in some time! It was actually an odd experience — I haven’t heard the song for years, but I remembered almost all the words the first time around, and the whole experience was very natural. For me, that was exciting!
Well, that’s it for me for now, but don’t miss the final official installment in New Bands Week for September 2008, a music video to be posted tomorrow by our very own Jeff Copperthite…
See you next session!