"Trouble in the Heartland" A Tribute EP Perhaps?

As a part of my radio station gig, I have to contribute to  the Dave and Carole Newsletter. So I entitled the column“At Random”, so I have a lot of flexibility on content – within reason of course. So this week, I am going with an audio “At Random”, and will share a little musical effort of mine.

For several years, I have been messing around in my basement, recording cover versions of some of my favorite songs. Ultimately, a song must start being composed on a single instrument, so I imagine how I would have done it initially and put it on tape. I never thought much about doing anything with them, until I saw what a casual musical acquaintance of mine from Boston, Bill Janovitz (of Buffalo Tom fame), has been doing with his covers. He has created a “cover of the week” blog where he records a cover and shares a personal story that brought him to the song.

It’s a cool idea. So, I am going to "rip it off" I guess. However, I am not going to burden you with a cover every week. They will pop up from time to time. It’s fun for me, and it gets me back in the recording mode. I also have been toying with this idea of putting out a CD of Springsteen covers titled, “Trouble in the Heartland”. I have a few in the can already, so I thought I'd share one. 

My first installment - New York City Serenade.

New York City Serenade is off Bruce’s second release, The Wild, The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle, the album most noted for the concert performance epic, Rosalita.

The first time I heard NYCS, I had never been to New York City, but as the lyrics unfolded, I could literally see the alley ways, the tenements, and Billy “sittin low in the back seat of his Cadillac”, somewhere in the middle of a rainy Manhattan night. I was able to put faces to The Fish Lady and the Vibes Man and the entire story played out with the visual look and feel of a Martin Scorcese film. The way Bruce uses words to create imagery is one of the reasons I am drawn to his music. Every song is a novella the listener gets to interpret in their own way. It energizes the mind as well as the ears.

This version is reminiscent of a cover version done by Pete Yorn, a singer-songwriter who has also covered several Springsteen songs. I started messing around with it, futzed with the piano and harmonica and it kind of came together.

I hope you like it. If not, that's cool too. 

Click here to listen

New York City Serenade