Tag Archives: radis

In Honor Of… Gospel!

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So, Gospel Music!  Yes, I know it’s kind of a cheat, as I said I’d be honoring the work of singer/songwriters, but I can bend the rules, because it’s my project :)

Before we continue, go listen to and maybe download this month’s “In Honor Of…” EP right here! – music.lorenradis.com/album/gospel

So hymns/gospel/worship music has been a part of my life as long as I can remember and it’s always been important to me because a) I’m a Christian, b) a lot of them are gorgeous songs and c) for the first dozen years that I played guitar, the only time I played in front of other humans was for worship at youth group.  Without playing at church I might (see: most likely) never would have had the confidence to start playing my own concerts in front of people, I met almost all of my good friends through playing music at church.

Religious music is also cool to me because, like a lot of other art forms, the majority of examples we have of very old music are religiously based simply because the only demand for music and art was in relation to the church.  Some of the most enduring pieces of visual art we have are things like the Last Supper, the various artist’s statues of David, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, all of them religious, and all of them windows into what the art and attitude of the day was like.  So while I identify with the songs I’ve chosen on a personal religious level, there’s also a whole nother level of the simple value of a piece of history preserved in musical form.  Anyway, I hope you like the songs, talk to you later,

-loren

In Honor Of… Paul Simon!

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This Month’s Release is In Honor Of Paul Simon! Yay!

Get it here, quick! – music.lorenradis.com/album/paul-simon

Paul Simon is … well, first off, he’s super awesome. We can all agree on that right? He amazes me because he’s been writing music for, nearly 50 years! And he’s been popular and relevant that whole time and has never really lost his artistic integrity in the eyes of his fans (like me).

Graceland is one of my favorite albums and still kind of held up as the perfect pop record. 2 of this month’s songs are from that album, so that says something. The music Paul is writing today is just as honest and beautiful as it ever was, and he’s never felt stagnant, he’s always changing, growing, evolving, and it’s fascinating to be along for the ride.

Other artists from his era are still writing music (I’m looking at you Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney) but they’re not – in my opinion – acheiving the same level of re-invention and relevance, they’re more cashing in on their previous success and kind of phoning it in. Paul Simon’s got his fair share of misses mixed in with the hits, but I feel like he’s never been one to phone it in, and I respect the hell out of that.

So, go grab your free copy of my tribute to one of the true greats, Paul Simon, over on the music page right now, enjoy, and thanks! – music.lorenradis.com/album/paul-simon

-loren

Why I Chose The Paul Simon Songs I Did!

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Have you grabbed your free copy of my album honoring the music of Paul Simon? It’s available right here right now! – music.lorenradis.com/album/paul-simon

Got it? OK! Now, if you’re wondering why I chose the songs I did, read on, you’ll learn everything you want to know :)

Bookends – OK, so this one’s kind of a cheat, not really a song in its own right. It’s only got two verses and is about a minute long, but this song has always sort of haunted me. it’s got a beautiful guitar part – I’ve always been a sucker for inverted thirds – and the lyrics are simple but poignant; a young man’s attempt to imagine what will be important to him in old age.

Bleecker Street – A great old Simon & Garfunkel song, it doesn’t seem to get the same amount of love as songs like Bridge Over Troubled Water and Sound of Silence, but I think it’s just as, if not more, effective of a song. It excels invoking the atmostphere of the time and place about which it is written. I’ve never been to New York at all, but I feel like I’m in young Paul’s shoes walking down the streets through the foggy twilight, listening to the sounds of life emanating from the many shops and cafes all around. I couldn’t change much about this song, but I tried to at least completely revamp the guitar part, make it my own.

You Can Call Me Al – I read once that Paul Simon wrote this song about a party he attended where another guest mis-heard Paul’s and Paul’s wife’s (Peggy) names as Al and Betty, and that’s where the idea came from. That synopsis does such a disservice to this song, in my opinion. If it was just a humorous anecdote about names mispoken at a party, I think it’d have been lost to the fog of memory years ago. It’s so much more than that though, and thus has endured and will continue to endure for decades as a pillar of what pop music can be, commercially viable while maintaining a high level of artistic integrity. The lyrics are so gorgeous, ruminations on growing old, realizing that maybe the goals we’ve been striving for all our lives aren’t as worthy as we once imagined, and the hope of a new beginning, maybe on a “street in a strange world”… I’ve tried to make the lyrics the star in this version of the song, Paul’s arrangement is so dense and fun that it’s easy to miss the depth and sincerity of the lyrics. Enjoy.

Gumboots – Another track from Graceland, probably Mr. Simon’s best known album. This one I changed pretty drastically from the source material too, and for a lot of the same reasons as “You Can Call Me Al”. When I listen to this song, I can’t really tell what he’s saying except for the refrain – “You don’t feel you could love me, but I feel you could.” That line alone was enough to make me decide to cover this song, I love it so. But when I started learning it I realized the rest of the lyrics are exactly what I’ve come to expect from Paul Simon, deep yet simple and beautiful in their subtlety. That chorus though, I can’t get enough of it. “You don’t feel you could love me, but I feel you could.”

So there’s that, I hope you like the songs, and thanks a ton for listening, reading, all that jazz!

-loren

In Honor of… The Beatles

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So!  It was probably pretty obvious my first “In Honor of…” EP would be the Beatles.  I can’t say enough how much I love them and their music, and it can’t be overstated how influential it’s been on me.  I might not be a musician at all if it weren’t for the Beatles.  The first time I ever heard anything by the Beatles was their live set before the Queen of England from the Beatles Anthology.  They played “She Loves You”, “I Want To Hold Your Hand”, “‘Till There Was You”, and “Twist and Shout”, and it isstillthe most impressive live set I have ever heard.

My 12 year old brain couldn’t even begin to understand how and why they were so awesome, I just knew I loved it.  The Beatles weren’t just incredible songwriters - they didn’t even write two of the songs in that set – although they were that.  They were near flawless performers, knowing how to work the crowd, whether it was a bunch of sweaty youths in an underground bar or the elite of Britain at a high class event.  Their performances were so in sync, so tight, so energetic.  You can tell that they’ve already played literally hundreds of shows together and they’ve gotten better with each and every one.

Anyway, the three songs I’ve chosen to cover in honor of the Beatles are: “Revolution”, “I Should Have Known Better”, and “I Will”.  You might notice that I’ve only chosen songs written by Lennon/McCartney.  I only had three slots to work with and, come on, who are we kidding?  If John Lennon and Paul McCartney went off on their own and George and Ringo went off on their own and both duos recorded their own music, whose do you think would be most like The Beatles’?  George and Ringo were integral to the Beatles, but John and Paul were the Beatles.

The Beatles’ songs were about a lot of things.  Their first few dozen were about love, then they branched out into things like politics, drugs, religion, all that jazz.  I feel like the core theme that resonates through nearly every song though, is love.

“Revolution” is a song that says “Yes, we need a better world, it sucks the way it is, but hurting other people isn’t the way to make it better, we need peace and love”.

“I Should Have Known Better” works on a really superficial level as a song about young love, being surprised how deeply in love you’ve fallen with a girl who was just a crush.  Maybe the author thought it would be a short relationship, a one-night stand even.  But he’s surprised to find he can’t pull himself away.  For a long time that’s all the song meant to me.  It’s pretty versatile though; my wife and I just had our first child, a little girl.  And when I think of this song in relation to her, well, I never knew I could love a girl as much as I love my daughter.  I love everything that she does, and even though it’s so vastly different from the romantic love the song was probably written about, it fits perfectly.

“I Will” really embodies Paul McCartney’s style of songwriting.  It’s in the same vein as things like “Yesterday”, “Blackbird”, “Some Days”… It’s simple, sweet, and absolutely gorgeous.  Paul McCartney has a way with melody, I don’t know how or why it works the way it does, but his melodies, even if there were no words, just sound like love.

So those are the three songs you can download for free on the music page – music.lorenradis.com –  right now, I hope you like my take on them.  Check back next month on the 15th for your next batch of covers, and thanks a ton!

-loren

New Project : In Honor of…

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Hi!

So I had this idea for a kind of big project.  I’ve been inspired by a lot of different songwriters throughout my life, and their influence has shaped me into who I am and the songs I write are a direct result of that shaping process.  I’ve also always had a blast recording covers of my favorite songs, and people seem to like listening to them too.

So, over the next 12 months I’m going to be paying tribute to the influential artists in my life by releasing covers their music.  Each month of 2013 will be dedicated to one artist and each month I’ll release a new EP of my interpretations of the featured artist’s songs!

Sounds cool right?  At the end of the year you’ll have one huge Super-Album of my covers, and since they’re not my songs, I’m not going to charge for them, it’s all free to you!

I’m not going to release the lineup of artists in advance, so it’ll be something of a surprise who I’m going to cover each month.  You probably could have guessed the Beatles would be one of the artists though, and you’re right, they’re this month’s featured artist!  You can grab my EP of Beatles covers right now in the music section – music.lorenradis.com

I’ll make a nice long blog post about how important the Beatles have been to me as a songwriter but I won’t waste your time with it now, you can check that out when it goes up if you’re interested.

So there you have it, check out the music page – music.lorenradis.com - each month on the 15th of the month for your new batch of free covers, recorded by yours truly, in honor of the artists who’ve made me who I am musically.  Thanks!

-loren