Sunday, November 11, 2012

Unfinished Cover - Copperhead Road

The track on SoundCloud :   Megacurve - Copperhead Road (Unfinished Demo)

An interesting story to why I even started this, Country Song.

Was watching one of the Topgear repeats and it was a USA trip, and had a lot on the history of NASCAR and the south.
Clarkson had ruined the tires on his Merc at a disused Nascar banked track. They were in a tire place, not getting far with replacements when Copperhead Road came on the radio, and the city Mayor started dancing and they talked about it being about running moonshine. NASCAR came out of the  moonshine runners testing their fast cars.

Seemed an interesting car, fixing a car, racing connection...... so I started, but didn't finish, a non country version of this one Saturday Morning shortly after.
It doesn't use much of the original, other than the mandolin chords and most of the lyrics. I went for a different much heavier feel. The Music Press called the original "Metal Twang", and there isn't much Twang left in this one.  The Southern accent is gone by the end too.

I think the originals bagpipe like organ intro and use just weird.  Works in AC/DCs "long way to the top", but not here, for me anyway. Not on an American country record.
The middle solo is nothing like the original and very over the top with the flanged guitar lead. Going for a psychedelic feel, with the Vietnam and drug references. The vocals need fixing (mistakes ), the reverb is too high and the 3rd verse does need more, such as an organ part, but more likely synthesizers.
The original speeds up all the way through, and this doesn't.   I had the original as a reference track while recording. I had done a different mix where you can actually hear the bass part, and it had less vocal reverb, but I prefer the first original quickly done version.

I think this song is all about the words anyway.... so here it is.   About 4 hours work.  All Di'ed guitar into Reaper.  Mic is an Audio Technica At2020 into a Behringer MIC100 tube preamp.

We haven't put up any of our other covers before. We stick to original work that we own and can do what we need with.  Covers are a good way to learn something new, and I think this was an interesting exercise. It is really more of a spoken story than a song, with really long verses, and not much in the way of a chorus.  Don't think it is worth finishing. 

The vocal starts with a southern accent.  As a kid I was a huge fan of  the 1969 MotorMouse and AutoCat cartoon, essentially a supercharged Hot Rod version of Tom and Jerry. The mouse had a southern accent, something I copied a lot as a kid.

Thanks for your time.




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