dis-cover-y...

One of the most fun things about doing cover songs is the act of stripping a song down to its bones, and then building it back up again. Lately, my favorite thing to do with songs is to drop the vocals an octave, and decrease the tempo by about 20%. This often does more than just take an uptempo song and make it kind of plodding and dark and dirgey... sometimes it has the unexpected effect of completely changing the meaning of the words. Suddenly the singer doesn't mean what he's saying... you can tell by the way the words flow differently.

The latest victim... "You Got Lucky", by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. There isn't much TO the song really... it's kind of a generic kiss-off rock song.... two verses... memorable but simple riff. But somehow what you strip it down to an acoustic guitar and sing the words "Go... just go.... Good love is hard to find, you got lucky babe.... when I found you..." slowly and quietly, what they really mean is... "NO! Wait! Come back!!"

Anyway... it was a nice surprise.