If this seems more appropriate to the holiday back in October than Christmas Eve Eve, that's because Michael J. "Monkey" "SayntMykyl" Simpson and I have been planning on doing it since just about then. Monkey and I were just reminiscing about our first attempt to do a Holiday recording some years back. It ended poorly. This went better. Michael's a multitalented individual, responsible for, among other things, the art design of the Skates & Rays CD and the fine photography available for viewing here. I feel stupid in retrospect (among other ways in which I feel stupid) for not setting aside time in this session to photograph the unique group of players... I have instead stolen an image from his photo gallery for use as the cover art. So Happy Holidays, whatever be the holiday for which you deem this recording appropriate.There were a number of cool things about recording this, not the least of which was the fact that Michael had never played, perhaps not even touched, a banjo prior to this recording, and one of my favorite things in recent 39-40 memory is his exact replication of the brief banjo intro on the original (which sounds more like a fragment of deleted track, and never fails to remind me of cruising past the dilapidated Cajun shack in the Bayou section of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland). His dead-on E-style vocal really brings it all together. Another watershed of sorts was how Miranda and Eden printed their contributions to the track... they both did it totally on their own while I was cooking dinner. We're starting to have a fully functional music making household around here, apparently.
Personnel:
Michael J. Simpson ~ Lead vocal, banjo
Rex Broome ~ Guitar, backing vocal, programming etc.
Miranda Broome ~ Bass guitar
Eden Hain ~ Ukulele
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