Do It Again (Wilson/Love) – At the beginning of each term, Jamie asks for suggestions from the class for a song to study and reproduce to the best of our collective abilities. This suggestion was provided by Glenn Erb, who shares my passion for The Beach Boys. This happens to be my favorite Beach Boys song, so this was a great idea as far as I was concerned. Breaking down all of the instrumental and vocal parts was a great learning experience, and was made a bit easier by the fact that track-only and vocal-only versions of the song had been officially released and were available on YouTube. I played all the instruments, programmed the drums, and sang all the vocals, except for one key part. The Brian Wilson “trumpet” part during the chorus was a bit above my reach, even with the pitch correction feature available in Cubase, so I called upon my wife, the lovely and talented Janine Browning, to give it a try. She came through with flying colors, as you will undoubtedly agree.
My Back Pages (Dylan) – This one was also suggested by Glenn. I had always wanted for my former band, Close Enough, to give this one a try, but at the time I didn’t have enough confidence in my ability to reproduce the gorgeous electric 12-string guitar sounds we hear on The Byrds’ version. With the pressure of performing in front of a crowd a non-factor, I was able to come pretty close, thanks to my Schecter Diamond Series 12-string and my Boss CS-3 compression pedal. I played and sang everything on this one.
Norwegian Wood (Lennon/McCartney) – It can be intimidating to cover a Beatles tune, but I didn’t feel any angst about recording this because I didn’t think anyone outside of my family would ever hear it. This is the first song I recorded by myself, after having nearly a year of Jamie’s instruction and mentorship under my belt. My daughter, Jillian, had always loved The Beatles, and, as with most folks of her generation, her first exposure to them was watching the animated film classic Yellow Submarine. Norwegian Wood was among her very favorites from the movie, so I set about making a version for her as a Valentine’s Day present. I had always been curious about what this song would have sounded like had George Harrison never met Ravi Shankar, so I used my electric 12-string as a replacement for the sitar. I was happy with how it came out, and Jillian was so delighted that she started using it as her ringtone.
867-5309/Jenny (Keller/Call) – This is the song we recorded in my first class, starting back in March, 2018. Jamie offered me, as the new kid in school, the chance to select the song. This is a power pop classic and was a favorite of my old band Close Enough, so I had some confidence that I could make a meaningful contribution. This is one of the songs I had to circle back and update a bit, since I hadn’t yet gotten into the habit of making a complete version of the class songs on my own. While I played and sang everything else, that’s our teacher, Jamie Hoover, on drums.