Put this one on the list of things you didn’t know you needed until you found out they existed.
Larry Maglinger, a studio owner and engineer in Owensboro, KY, who is also a professional Rod Stewart impersonator, has combined his many talents with the biggest story there in town – the ongoing construction of the new International Bluegrass Music Center – to create an album of the British rocker’s biggest hits, with a bluegrass twist.
The result is Rod Stewart with A Touch of Bluegrass, a CD offering ten Stewart classics cut with a bluegrass band. Larry worked with Steve Chandler at Hilltop Studios in Nashville, a town where he had once turned the knobs at Woodland Sound Studios, to create this project.
Aubrey Haynie plays mandolin and fiddle, with Bruce Watkins on banjo and guitar, David Smith on bass, and Lonnie Wilson and Steve Brewster on drums. The album title is eerily accurate; Larry really does sound like Rod Stewart, and it definitely has more than a touch of bluegrass.
The songs chosen for inclusion are taken primarily from Stewart’s early career:
- Maggie May
- Hot Legs
- Forever Young
- You’re In my Heart
- Do Ya Think I’m Sexy
- Have I Told You Lately
- Ooh La La
- Reason To Believe
- Have You Seen The Rain
- Infatuation
Here’s a static video of one of the tracks, which was a #1 hit for Stewart in 1978 and ’79.
You can hear audio samples of all the tracks in iTunes or at CD Baby.
