For her latest single, a bluegrass arrangement of Madonna’s 1984 hit, Borderline, Nashville flatpicker and vocalist Rebecca Frazier brought in grassed-up rock cover specialists Love Canon to serve as her studio band. The song will appear on Frazier’s upcoming Compass Records project, Boarding Windows in Paradise, expected September 13.
As an ’80s kid herself, Rebecca says that her initial hearing of Borderline never really registered the deeper meaning of the song, written by Reggie Lucas, until she examined the lyrics again once she was grown.
“I remember hearing this song on the car radio when I was a little kid. Madonna made a huge impression on me and lots of young girls; she was a symbol of self-power. As an adult, I revisited the song and realized how beautiful the composition is. I love the interplay with the melody and harmony, and the chord changes speak to me.
I’ve been a Love Canon fan for a decade now, and I was thrilled when they agreed to cut this song with me. It was a thrill to hashout arrangement ideas with them, and I brought in some flatpicking ideas for an instrumental solo section. Stuart Duncan’s captivating fiddling on the track adds to the dance feel of the song.
Shelby Means, Adam Chaffins, and Andrea Zonn are incredibly soulful in their harmony vocals. I love how all of these pieces came together on this track.”
With Frazier on guitar and lead vocal, support came from Love Canon – Adam Larabee on banjo, Jay Starling on reso-guitar, Andy Thacker on mandolin, Jesse Harper on guitar, and Darrell Muller on bass – plus Stuart Duncan on fiddle.
It really works and turns out to be a jamtastic number. Check it out…
Pre-orders for Boarding Windows in Paradise are enabled now online. Radio programmers can get a copy of the Borderline single via AirPlay Direct.
Cover Story, the 4th album from Virginia’s Love Canon, is among the most interesting releases we have covered at Bluegrass Today. It’s not really a bluegrass record in the traditional sense of the word, or even an exhibition of bluegrass music. What it conveys instead is a celebration of the bluegrass ensemble, the group of instruments that Bill Monroe pulled together in the late 1940s to make up his Blue Grass Boys, playing them differently than was the current fashion, and reshaping forever the way they would be viewed in the popular mind.
Love Canon aren’t the first to reimagine the bluegrass band this way. Musicians schooled in bluegrass have been doing so for at least 40 years in varying degrees, starting perhaps with The Country Gentlemen who brought material from outside the genre into the grassy mainstream. But they rarely deviated the resulting sound far from what had come before. In our time we see Punch Brothers creating contemporary pop using acoustic instruments, and doing so with a vey high degree of skill, to critical and popular acclaim.
What we have on Cover Story is something different. These guys apply that same high level of virtuosity, but look backwards to the pop music of the ’80s with a joyous collection of songs that should be cemented into most of our brains. Even if you aren’t a particular fan of radio pop and rock, any period of roughly 10 years is sure to contain a number of truly memorable songs, and that is what Love Canon has chosen.
Only a few tracks get the uptempo grassification treatment, and only where it works. On mega hits like Kyrie Eleison from Mister Mister (1985), and Tempted from Squeeze (1981), the band retains the rhythmic structure of the originals, using the acoustic instruments to mimic the beats and accents of a keyboard and drum-driven band, but without percussion. It’s a statement a bit like Tony Rice’s with Manzanita which said loudly and clearly that you could play bluegrass without a banjo – although it never set out to do so.
To cover iconic hits like that you need a truly powerful lead vocalist, which Love Canon has in Jesse Harper. They also use guest vocalists, as on Driver 8, originally a guitar twangfest from R.E.M (1985), sung here with a bit of a bluegrass beat by Keller Williams. Tempted, in particular, involves a song originally performed by Paul Carrack, among the most distinctive singers of that era, and guest Erik Krasno turns in a very creditable performance.
The entire band is strong. Adam Larrabee is on banjo, Darrell Muller on bass, Andy Thacker on mandolin, and Jay Starling on reso-guitar.
The band doesn’t carry a fiddler as a rule, but they make great use of guests Alex Hargreaves, Mike Barnett, and Michael Cleveland to cover synth parts, which serve them well on tracks like Things Can Only Get Better, recorded by Howard Parker in 1985. The strings set the tone for the intro, and Love Cannon goes on to retain the funky beat of the original, with mandolin and banjo providing the percussive sounds .
For some reason, Paul Simon’s Graceland (1986) has been a popular number for bluegrass groups to cover this past few years, but I haven’t heard one succeed to the degree of this one here, which does get a grassy feel. Harper gives it a fine reading, supported by Aoife O’Donovan. It just works.
As does their version of Peter Gabriel’s Solsbury Hill, paired in a medley with an instrumental composition with a Celtic flavor from Harper, Icecaps Of Pentatonia. Gabriel is another of those immediately-recognizable singers who often repel cover attempts, but guest Mark Erelli serves up a fine rendition. Love Cannon again retains the feel of the original in their rhythm section with the bass avoiding the familiar bluegrass 1-5 pattern in favor of the rockier repetition of the 1, and the banjo and guitar playing the signature guitar part from Gabriel’s 1977 recording.
Other songs include a country song, Islands In The Stream, a hit for Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton in 1983, sung here by Harper and Lauren Balthrop, who does a great job of putting over a Dolly-like vocal. This one even gets a brass section! Perhaps the farthest stretch for an acoustic cover is Enjoy The Silence from Depeche Mode (1990). Again the mandolin and banjo provide a simulacrum of what the drum kit did originally. And they also take on Billy Joel’s Prelude/Angry Young Man, the only fully instrumental track on the album.
If you have a passions for ’80s radio hits, and enjoy experimentation with bluegrass instruments, Cover Story is can’t miss. You non-bluegrass friends will rock along with you in the car, or dance with you at a party.
But Love Canon is more than a novelty, and this album is serious music, pointing the way towards other sounds that a bluegrass band can produce. Find the album, released on Organic Records, wherever you purchase music.
One of the most fascinating aspects of the contemporary bluegrass scene is the segmentation that has occurred organically over the years. People come to the music on many paths, and can sample the wide variety of sounds on offer, settling on a strain that best suits their tastes, their lifestyle, and their socio-political outlook.
Traditionalists can revel in the music of Larry Sparks or David Parmley, while more adventurous listeners may prefer Larry Keel or Sam Bush. Either way, there are festivals and events geared to that audience most every weekend during the summer season, with CDs and t-shirts for sale, and a welcoming spirit that says, “Come on in… the music’s fine!”
There is even a somewhat more intellectual vein of serious instrumental music played in a bluegrass ensemble, like Mr. Sun or Jake Schepps’ Expedition Quartet, and a more poppy, Nashville-like vocal sound that some folks prefer from artists like Flatt Lonesome or The Grascals. If you look a bit deeper, you can follow any of these acts back to their antecedents, and see the sensible progression that led down each pathway.
One band that is finding success along the edges of bluegrass is Love Canon, based in Charlottesville, VA. Skilled grassers one and all, they use their considerable talents to perform pop and rock radio hits on acoustic instruments. Sometimes they turn these familiar songs into bluegrass numbers, as did The Osborne Brothers and Country Gentlemen before them, and in other cases they retain the feel of the original, but played with banjo, mandolin, and reso-guitar.
You find them most often at festivals where more experimental music is featured, and at events where attendees are less likely to be bluegrass regulars. But mainstream grassers really should take a listen to these boys as well. Nothing about their music is a joke. They take the original recordings seriously, and produce a high-quality product that combines the fun of hearing a former hit song, with the novelty of a bluegrass arrangement.
And they even have a bluegrass pedigree, with Jay Starling, son of Seldom Scene legend, John, on dobro and vocals!
The band has a new album due in July, called Cover Story – A Journey Through Music’s Greatest Decade, which shows what Love Canon can do on 9 former top 10s from the ’80s and ’90s. Young music lovers will surely enjoy the record, but those of us who lived through the era will delight in these covers of music from Peter Gabriel, Billy Joel, Depeche Mode, Paul Simon, and others.
As a taste of what’s to come, Organic Records is offering this preview of one of the tracks, a dutiful rendering of Kyrie Eleison from US pop rockers Mr. Mister in 1985. The song hit #1 on Billboard in ’86, and the music video was ubiquitous on MTV that summer. One odd impact of the song was the discovery by a good many unchurched youth that the phrase referenced in the title was an ancient prayer of the early Christians, which is still part of the Catholic Mass offered every day all over the world. Kyrie Eleison translates from the Greek into Lord Have Mercy.
Guitarist/vocalist Jesse Harper shared a few thoughts about the song, and their version.
“Kyrie Eleison is one of those epic ’80s tunes that has an amazingly catchy chorus. As a kid I always thought the lyrics were ‘carry a laser down the road that I must travel’… why not? Jerry Douglas plays on this one and it’s one of the most amazing dobro solos I’ve ever heard. What a thrill it was to record this with one of our musical heroes.”
In addition to Harper and Starling, the band includes Adam Larabee on banjo, Andy Thacker on mandolin, and Darrell Muller on bass. Theirs is always a fun show, and a great way to introduce a non-bluegrass friend to the ways of the grass.
For Cover Story, they have an assemblage of guest artists selected from both the bluegrass and alt-grass scenes in the studio. Michael Cleveland, Alex Hargreaves, and Mike Barnett play fiddle, and Aoife O’Donovan and Keller Williams add vocals.
The album is set to drop on July 13, with the single for Kyrie releasing on Friday, June 8.
Love Canon signing: Darrell Muller, Jay Starling, Andy Thacker, Adam Larrabee, Josh Trivett, Ty Gilpin, Jesse Harper
Moonstruck Management and Organic Records have jointly announced new relationships with Love Canon. The Charlottesville, VA-based quintet has found perhaps the most unique niche in the acoustic music world, conveying ’80s pop music in a bluegrass setting, and it has resonated with fans all over the United States, primarily in the growing phenomenon of jamgrass festivals.
The band looks like your average bluegrass band, with the banjo, mandolin, guitar, bass, and dobro format, but uses their considerable instrumental and vocal abilities to win fans to the music with arrangements of songs that will be immediately familiar to a non-bluegrass audience. And they have a legit pedigree in reso-guitarist Jay Starling, who is the son of the legendary John Starling of Seldom Scene fame.
Other members of Love Canon include Jesse Harper on guitar and lead vocals, Adam Larrabee on banjo, Andy Thacker on mandolin, and Darrell Muller on bass.
Josh Trivett of Moonstruck Management, who will handle booking representation and band management, says that he’s had his eye on these guys for some time.
“I first became a fan of Love Canon back in 2015 when I saw them at a show in Bristol, TN. The following year, I was able to work with them as the talent buyer for the Huck Finn Jubilee in California. The guys have always blown me away with their musicianship, unique approach and execution of their live show! We couldn’t be more excited to finally have the opportunity to add Love Canon to the Moonstruck Management Roster.”
Organic Records will be the group’s new label. An imprint of Crossroads Entertainment which handles a variety of bluegrass and Gospel music, Organic focuses on artists whose sound crosses genres, and is less susceptible to easy categorization.
Ty Gilpin with the label believes that they will attract a following from fans of all sorts of acoustic music.
“We are so glad to welcome the refined talent of Love Canon to Organic Records. They have done something I’ve not heard many artists do. They blend musical styles in a way embody the best of all worlds. If you are a music fan that has only dabbled in acoustic music, Love Canon is your gateway drug!”
Here’s an example of their music, a Love Canon version of The Grateful Dead’s Touch Of Gray…
..and a playful version of Men At Work’s Down Under.
A new album, Cover Story, is due this spring on Organic Records, featuring 10 of their most popular live show numbers, ’80s hits all, with a bevy of special guests.
