For this episode, I’m doing something a little different. I play is a duo that covers Beatles songs called “The Fab Folk” (along with my friend, Matt Weidauer) and earlier this year, in honor of it’s 50th anniversary, we performed the Beatles’ album “Revolver” in it’s entirety. This lead to the idea of recording a full album of these songs. So now for this listening party, I’m going to play each song and give you some commentary to go with it.

1. Taxman – During the live show, we had our friend, John-Ross Boyce sing and so we invited him to come in and sing again for the studio version. You’ll hear him later on in a few other songs as well. For the instruments, I played acoustic guitar, bass, and sang harmonies while Matt played cajon, tambourine and sang harmonies.
2. Eleanor Rigby – For this arrangement, we knew doing a string quartet arrangement like the Beatles wasn’t going to work so we reinterpreted it with a bluegrass, cowboy feel. We invited my wife, Melissa so sing on this one. I played acoustic guitar, cajon, tambourine, organ, bass and sang while Matt played the mandolin.
3. I’m Only Sleeping – For this one, I sang, played acoustic guitar, bass, and brushes on a cajon and ride cymbal. Matt provided the mandolin and sang harmonies.
4. Love You To – The Beatles version of this one is heavily influenced by Indian music but for our arrangement, we stripped it down to something really basic and direct. Matt sang lead vocals and played acoustic guitar while I played cajon, organ and sand harmonies.
5. Here, There And Everywhere – We kept this one fairly sparse like the original but instead of the oh and ahs, I played melodica. I also sang and played acoustic guitar while Matt played the cajon.
6. Yellow Submarine – Like Eleanor Rigby, we sped this one up and gave it a bluegrass cowboy feel. John-Ross sang lead vocals. I played guitar, cajon, tambourine, organ and sang harmonies while Matt played mandolin and sang harmonies.
7. She Said She Said – We kept this arrangement fairly true to the original. Matt sang and played acoustic guitar. I played cajon and sang harmonies.
8. Good Day Sunshine – Like the last song, we also stayed fairly true to the original version. Instead of piano, Matt play acoustic guitar and sang lead while I played cajon, the piano solo in the middle and sang harmonies. We added a little delay effect at the end to imitate the Beatles recording.
9. And Your Bird Can Sing – For this one, we resurrected an old recording we started a couple years ago but never finished. Matt sang, played acoustic and electric guitars while I played cajon, shaker and sang harmonies.
10. For No One – The Beatles version of this features piano and a french horn solo. Like the Beatles, we kept it sparse but instead used acoustic guitar (which I played) and mandolin (which Matt played) and I sang the lead vocal part.
11. Doctor Robert – This one was actually recorded at the Revolver tribute show I mentioned earlier. Matt sang lead and played acoustic guitar while I played cajon and harmonized. Not everything picked up very strongly in the live recording so I overdubbed another cajon track and added bass, tambourine and melodica along with some additional harmonies.
12. I Want To Tell You – This one is pretty basic. Matt sang and played acoustic while I sang harmonies and played cajon and a tambourine.
13. Got To Get You Into My Life – This is another track we took from the live recording of our show. John-Ross sang lead vocals. I played acoustic guitar and sang harmonies while Matt played cajon and sang harmonies. To fill it out a bit more, I had John-Ross some to the studio and overdub another vocal track and I added bass, tambourine, an additional cajon track, more harmonies and several tracks of melodica to imitate the Beatles’ brass arrangement.
14. Tomorrow Never Knows – This last song was also taken from the live recording of our show. Pretty much all of our arrangements have an acoustic guitar but for this one, we had a hard time coming up with something that sounded right. So, instead, we invited our friend and music producer, Eric Robertson to play keyboards while John-Ross sang lead vocals and Matt and I both played cajon. To fill it out a bit more, I went back and overdubbed bass, shakers, and two electric guitar tracks: one played with an ebow and the other plucking the notes from the chords, then put in reverse (to imitate the reverse sounds the Beatles used on the original). I also faded the song out and increased to reverb as it faded, as if the song were evaporating into thin air.

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