Copied and pasted from YouTube. Not sure why the color's all jacked up[. Frickin Blogger front end.
After work the other day, I got in the car and before my phone took over with a podcast, this song was on the radio. I forgot what part, but when the chorus hit with the female voice over the top, I was sold. That's my guilty pleasure, a pretty female harmony vocal. The song was pretty cool too; I had no idea what or who it was (I don't listen to the radio (other than XM) anymore).
A quick Google listen via the phone told me it was "Turn Off The News (Build a Garden)" by Lukas Nelson and his band. I did know Lukas is Willie's son, but that's the extent of that.
I'm also not a country music fan, but this isn't really country, right? It's rock? It's alt-country? I have no idea, but I sort of fell in love with it over the past few days.
During those few days, I discovered (thanks Wikipedia) that the female voice on this song is none other than Sheryl Crow, which makes total sense and makes me love it even more. I can't say I'm a super fan, but when her songs come on, I don't change the station.
Listening to the bass parts in this song, they are competent and fit the song but they are nothing that jumps out. Rather than learn the original bassist's lines note by note, I got enough of the flavor and got the song structure down pretty quickly. I did a quick run-through yesterday on a P bass and then figured, why not record as a bass cover?
I played through with my gold G&L also and got a great take, but not on video. I then grabbed the Hog and gave it a try and got a decent take. No major flubs, but more like "design choices" that, if I was in the studio, I'd want to punch in and refine. But for one take, I'll live with it.
Speaking of studio time, Planets is going back to the studio tomorrow, up to London Bridge. We're gonna get three more songs recorded, which will make something like 11 or 12, and hope to get a vinyl out within the next 3-5 years (jk). I figured getting some studio vibes in front of my home "studio" wouldn't be a bad thing and this here video is the result.
To record the bass, I went from my 84 G&L L-1000 with flats into my Focusrite, which went into Audacity. I downloaded the song via a YT to mp3 converter, then fed that into Moises.ai, which broke the stems out. Then I put those stems into Audacity and got to work. The bass tone has Audacity's built in "bass guitar" compression and "medium overdrive" via its distortion plugin. I bumped the bass up a little to put it up front, then married the Audacity mp3 to the phone video via Clipchamp on my PC.
All told, it took me about an hour or so. I hope you like the song as much as I do. And, as the song says, "turn off the news," especially these days, especially tomorrow. I'll be in the recording studio, happily isolated.
