Project 44: Neil Young
I Got A Problem
June Panic
Neil knows how to strip things back to the bare minimum when he wants to.
A riff and a guy with a problem.
What more do you need?
Actually, the riff is barely a riff.
And no real specifics on the problem either.
Lots of musical/lyrical space left open for your own imagination to fill in:
What genre is this? Who is this weirdo? Where is he at? Have I ever been there?
The best version of the song I know of is from the ‘Solo Trans’ mock TV Special,
directed by the great Hal Ashby, originally released exclusively on Laser Disc,
years before the song appeared on any recording.
Kelly Duclos
Down to the Wire by Neil Young and Buffalo Springfield
Decade was the first Neil Young album I really got into and I love the first two songs on it.
Burned by Neil Young and Buffalo Springfield
This is a quick and rough 4 track transfer to computer project that features my son, Henry, on drums. We set out to record drums and guitar in a live take on the 4 track and after a couple starts and stops in a couple of styles, we spontaneously wound up playing it half-time which was fun to just go with. My wife, Martha, and Henry joined in later in the process with some backing vocals. Thanks for joining in, guys!
Motion Pictures (for Carrie)
Alex Dohm and Tyler Mickelson
Here is my first contribution as producer/engineer/sideman. It features Tyler Mickelson on vocals, acoustic guitar, and electric guitar and me on resonator and electric guitars. It is "Motion Pictures (for Carrie)" -- Neil Young forever!
Thanks,
Alex
(Breathe) Down by the River Neil Floyd (or Floyd Young)
Bill Fricke
To be honest, I’m not a huge Neil Young fan in terms of his music, but I respect the heck out him for being single-minded and following his own uncompromising path. I started a deep dive into his catalog, but he’s too darned prolific!
The one song that I always loved was “Down by the River”, from “Everybody Knows This is Nowhere”, his first with Crazy Horse. The topic is a little dark, but I loved the simplicity of the song and the long guitar jams.
I started doing a version of it and accidentally stumbled upon something that sounded eerily familiar. I discovered that the path I had gone down sounded a lot like “Breathe” by Pink Floyd. I found that they are essentially the same chord pattern, so why not mash them up? It gave me an excuse to learn two iconic songs, use my lap steel, and do some ersatz Neil Young guitar solos.
Old Man
Mike Bettison and Ryan Brosious
This one features my good friend Ryan on vocals. Ryan and I both have dads that have passed away so this was sentimental on all kinds of levels. I just love Ryans voice here and very happy with how it turned out.
Geek stuff: Abelton, Native instruments Abby Road Drums, Session Guitarist Acoustic Sunburst. I used Glue Compressor and Ozone 11 to master.
Helpless
Jacob Sharff
The first basic guitar chords I learned were from a Neil Young “easy guitar” book. “Helpless" was in that book and for my then 15 year old brain I remember it being a complete revelation when I discovered that not only did the song only have three chords, but they were also played in the same progression throughout the entire song. Even the chorus is sung over the same chord progression. What? You can do that? Mind. Blown. The idea of playing music and even writing my own songs instantly seemed possible. I think Neil Young was the first person to make me realize how far a few simple chords can go.
Given the punk rock nature of the three chord song structure, I thought it would be fun to give the song a faster, more straight forward "rockin in the free world" vibe. While looking around for some pre-existing loops or samples that might work to create drums for this, I ended up coming across some isolated Husker Du drum tracks. I started playing the Helpless chord progression along with Pink Turns to Blue and it seemed to fit strangely well. After a bit of editing, I got it to fit the structure of Helpless close enough to sorta work, so a super duper huge thanks to Grant Hart for helping out with drums on this one.
In the spirit of Neil Young, and an attempt to keep things somewhat raw and unfiltered, the guitar, bass, and vocal tracks were all done in pretty much one take and I resisted the urge to go back and fix any mistakes. The whole thing basically came together in one night. Definitely the least amount of time I’ve spent on a basement sketch project thus far. Hope Neil would approve…
Powderfinger
K.C. McKee
Here is my cover of "Powderfinger" from Rust Never Sleeps. One of my favorite Neil Young songs, with very haunting and impressionistic lyrics telling the tale of the doomed narrator. I feel like it kind of fits in with all the gritty nihilistic cinema of that era, like Chinatown and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (and I think Neil Young was kind of dabbling in filmmaking at the time of this album's release).
This version was recorded in a single take straight to 2-track tape, with guitar, vocals, and a harmonica part standing in for lead guitar. Enjoy!
-K.C. McKee
Harvest Moon and Cinnamon Girl
Colby Heston
One of the best shows that I ever witnessed was Neil Young with Booker T and the M.G. 's as his back up band (Soundgarden opened).It was magical.
These are two of my favorite Neil songs. I chose to keep them traditional to the originals.
Enjoy!
Harvest Moon
Neil Fasen and Chris Danforth
Chris and I wanted to turn Harvest Moon into a short pop song and strip out as much human touch as possible. We leaned on more artificial than acoustic sounds and chopped off many lyrics to get this under 3 minutes.
We Are In Control
Grant Eull
Once again a project aligns with my desire rock some guitar riffs!!! Oh wait, change of plans; after our last challenge I wasn’t feeling like making a rock song or a campfire acoustic number. Good thing Neil had that moment in life hanging out with the boys of DEVO. Have you watched the movie Human Highway? I have yet to do so, but the DEVO and Kraftwerk influence on Neil is also readily available in album form. His 1983 release Trans shocked everyone. He had recently acquired a Synclavier and a vocoder and embraced a new form for expression in song writing. I decided this was the perfect record to re-listen to and take on my alter ego OMIEM.
I knew I was limited in time to complete this projects as all of my nine band projects are all in full gigging mode. Furthermore, in early April I booked travel and planned to not do any music to pause in hopes it helps with burnout. Anyway, in the spirit of Basement Sketches here’s what I can now do in just a half day of focused effort. I feel it's a fantastic example of how far I have come as a home studio hack. Thanks to this project and community for giving me space to work on things like this. I have grown a ton because of this community and I appreciate the support we give each other. Excited to hear the posts and to celebrate at a spring party.
Enjoy - We R In Control
Fuckin’ Up and Till The Mornin’ Comes
David Cox
Twofer! Neil Young and Neil Old (although Neil was younger when Ragged Glory came out than I am now). Thanks to our Neil for help with bass on F*!#in'Up!
Everybody Knows
Tom Stromsodt
It’s been a hard month but I wanted to give it a go. Neil Young is interesting. I can’t go deep on his catalog despite knowing he is at least partially responsible for everything I like. Plus. He’s Canadian. I’ll try harder.
Albuquerque
Daniel Jöst and Kelly Duclos (Paper Dam)
I first heard this song as a cover by the Norwegian band Motopsycho on their album The Tussler from 1994. Daniel introduced me to this band way back in 1999 and then reminded me of this song when I went to visit him in Munich this last December. We jumped at the opportunity to make our own version for this project. Daniel had the idea of enlisting our friends and family to help sing the chorus so this recording features the 16 piece Paper Dam choir - 8 voices from Minnesota and 8 more voices from Germany. Thanks everyone for joining in! KD
Hey Hey My My and Out on the Weekend
Pete Foss
This was a fun project. I've obviously heard Neil Young songs before because he was part of the cultural zeitgeist I grew up in, but I've never intentionally listened to Neil Young. I made a playlist, and he's got some great songs! "Hey Hey My My" quickly stood out as the first choice and I had an idea to it in my own way. It went pretty quick and I had some time, so I did another - I picked "Out on the Weekend," because I just like the vibe of the song. I don't have much prior experience recording acoustic guitar so I'm still fuguring that out, but I like how these turned out - looking forward to hearing what everyone else came up with!
Cheers,
Pete
Captain Kennedy and Down by the River
Titus Kennedy and Andrew Charon
Captain Kennedy
Titus: I’m a sailor, so this one matched up really nicely. Working with Andrew on selecting a song became the first fun challenge of this project. I am more of a classic/best hits Neil Young fan, and I don’t know the deep discography like Andrew does, so it was eye-opening to encounter some deeper cuts. Truth is: NY hits me in a way that isn’t super intricate musically, and I wanted to bring some of that intricacy to our renditions. When Andrew pitched ‘Capt Kennedy’ I knew we had some good groundwork to work with. I quickly learned the song (and not perfectly I might add), and then we set out to record. In our second session I recruited my partner Sena to help write and perform a harmony track to sound akin to an Appalachian folk harmony, with fifths/fourths and a pedal tone drone like sound. I thought that matched the sentiment of the song. We rehearsed a bit and she then nailed it. Thanks to Andrew for his mixing chops, it came together nicely. Then I shipped it to Denver and had my long-time friend Joshua Kolbaba take a swing at building something into it. An hour after sending it to him, he sent back a Djembe + Ukelele + Shaker track that made me laugh aloud with how perfectly it fit the song. Kudos again to Andrew for bringing it all into focus. I am really happy with the output of this song.
Down by the River
Titus: Shockingly, down by the river isn’t the happiest of songs. It cuts deep. My good friend Zach Puchtel found solace and catharsis in the song as it paralleled a life situation he was going through at the time we recorded this (no he’s not out there murdering people 🙂) – He deduced that the song is a breakup song. Zach is a gifted free-styler and so we opened the session up for multiple looping takes where he could riff and lay down some poetic spoken-word in a flow format. The result: several stanzas of dank, dense inner working. Again Andrew pulled together many takes of varying output to sync up the best work we put forth: me on guitar and vocals and Zach on vocals. I love the way this one meanders and holds space for the dark-sides of life.
Comes A Time and Transformer Man
The Dirtpops
Comes A Time by The Dirtpops
We elected to tackle this song as a 3 hour recording restriction. Troy and Andrew came up with the original concept for the song and structure. Andrew played guitar and bass, and programmed the drums. Troy played guitar and sang. Shelly sang. And Nate Stensgard played the lead guitars. Troy and Andrew produced and mixed the song.
This project was completed using various stock Logic plug-ins. For vocals we used our new Slate Audio Modeling microphone and affiliated Slate Audio microphone emulations and plug-ins.
Transformer Man by The Dirtpops
The original idea was to marry the unplugged and the original Trans recording of the song. So this is our attempt at doing that.
Andrew plays bass, Shelly guitar and vocals, Troy on Omnichord/guitar/vocals/synths/glock/production.