Under Cover (November 2014) – Cortez The Killer and Wonderin’

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This is part two of our newly launched Under Cover feature. Every month we be offer free downloads of two cover songs: one recorded by Cowboy Junkies and another recorded by a Latent artist. We are running this feature off of the Latent Recordings Facebook page. All you need to do is go to the page, click the Under Cover link and follow the prompts.

We recorded Cortez The Killer during the Early 21st Century Blues sessions. It fit in well with the album themes of war, violence, fear and greed that we were exploring on that album. It never made the final cut but, we always liked that it had the appropriate looseness that a song like this deserves. The guitars don't quite match up to Neil's and Pancho's, but brother John and I gave it the old college try and we had fun doing it…it was like we were back in our basement in Montreal playing air guitar as Zuma spun on the turntable. 

Jerry Leger and his band came in to The Hangar to record a few cover songs a couple of months ago. They have a hundred of them in their repetoire…literally. Wonderin is an obscure Neil song off of the Shocking Pinks rock n roll album that he released as a "fuck you" to Geffen Records back in the 80's. It's a great band doing a great version of a rarely covered song. I think that it sounds like an outake from Workingman's Dead…there is a great loping feel to it. this is what Jerry says about the song, "Wonderin' is just a good old fashioned rock 'n' roll song. It's hard to write one of those and make it work and I think Neil Young pulled it off even though it's a bit of a hidden tune. The chorus has fantastic lyrical rhythm and the song opens with a good line, "Been walking all night long, my footsteps made me crazy". 

If you don't have Jerry's latest release, Early Riser, please check it out and take a listen…I had the pleasure of producing it, it's a terrific album.