Hell I'd Go!
Okay, you asked for it, another song from the TED House Band: this time, a cover of a nifty Dan Hicks tune about alien abductions, which originally appeared on his album ‘Beat The Heat.’
There’s a healthy belief in life on other planets at TED. Some of this is fueled by physicists and astronomers there like Stephen Hawking and Freeman Dyson who confidently predict that it’s only a matter of time. Every now and then we get a complete nutter who claims to have been beamed up and subjected to anal probes and cruel sexual experiments. Just the evening before we’d heard of how the pyramids were actually alien pleasure palaces. So this tune seemed very appropriate, and the band is rocking! My vocal sounds like I’ve been at the Jack Daniels. Rachelle Garniez pops in as a kind of interstellar flight attendant, and provides a nice overblown claviola solo. I have an acoustic guitar patch dialed up on my Yamaha Motif 8 (as I did on ‘Tubas In The Moonlight’) which enables some good interplay with Mark Stewart’s actual acoustic.
Dan Hicks sent me a sweet postcard from California (surprise, Dan don’t do email) and seemed pleased that I’d covered another of his songs…. as you recall, he also penned ‘I Scare Myself’ which I covered on ‘The Flat Earth.’ I am so glad he’s still with us! I took a few liberties with the lyrics as I only remembered about 2/3 of them and I don’t own a copy of the original. Enjoy!
I have to say, Hell I’d Go and Tubas In The Moonlight are delightful, I’d love to hear more in this style, you breathed new life into those songs. Rachelle Garniez is a revelation!
I’ve loved Dan Hicks ever since my older brothers played his music for me when I was a little girl. I never dreamed I’d end up living where he grew up and have the opportunity to see him on a regular basis. I was thrilled by your rendition of “I Scare Myself” and am even moreso with this newest entry! It amazes me how well suited your voice is to this material, Thomas. Oftentimes a cover can sound jarring when one is so used the hearing the original but this is sweet bliss! Rachelle is a treat!
Man, this is going to be stuck in my head all day! Before I read your comments, I was wondering if some of the lyrics were of your own design. Great group, inspired song choices…
Keep ‘em coming!
Beech
That was pretty awesome.
I love that Claviola. I can’t say I’ve ever heard on of those, and known what it was at the same time.
duglmac
Ah those vids are sweet. You were right about the whiskey-soak on your vocals. Tom Waits up an octave.
You definitely need to release an album of this material sometime. Damn catchy tune! I like the low-key instrumentation, the claviola solo, and the vocal duet with Rachelle. More, please.
My goodness, I’m a bit late to your online scene! I just received the Sole Inhabitant DVD from CDBaby yesterday and watched the concert and all the extras last night – and what was that? New Material?
I know you mentioned not reading too much into the first new pieces you release as the “direction” you’re going, but if these TED performances are any indication of where you are headed, Hell I’d Go!
I must echo some other commenters here and say I think your voice seems quite well suited to some of the classic jazz and swing era songs. I would love to hear you do new material that the style of 40′s era swing – say, if Basie or Harry James were around with the tech of today.
On a side note, any chance of seeing these TED performances as downloads on CDBaby? I’m using up YouTube’s bandwidth by playing this video every day!
I’m laughing and crying both. That was fabulous. Sounds like I tuned into Prairie Home Companion (ummm…that’s a compliment!)