Songs With Strings #2

Songs with Strings #2
an ongoing MP3 series featuring good songs with good strings


This one goes out to my darling (and adorably pregnant) wife. This is probably one of her favorite songs with strings, and as an accomplish cellist, that means a lot. The song, Death Right, comes from Rocky Votolato's 2003 Suicide Medicine. That is probably my favorite Rocky Votolato album. This song provides an interesting juxtaposition of Rocky's most gravel-y rough voice with some exquisite and almost painful sounding strings. It think the result is great. My wife never lets me skip this song if it comes up on shuffle on the iPod. So - enjoy.

Rocky Votolato - Death Right.mp3

Songs With Strings #1

Songs with Strings #1
an ongoing MP3 series featuring good songs with good strings

For our first installment we turn to the early career of one of my favorites - Ben Folds, who, in my opinion, is one of the most talented songwriters and musicians of our time. One of his best songs came early - on his 1990 demo. It was a bluesy track called Kalamazoo. Great song, fan favorite, but the original sound quality left MUCH to be desired. Thankfully, in 2004 Ben re-recorded Kalamazoo and put it on Super D, the third in a 3-part EP project. Explaining the new recording, Ben Folds said the following:

There's a couple of demos of this song floating around for years. I wrote it when I was about 19 or 20. One of the demos is really upbeat, recorded with my old band, Majosha. The other one was a four-track demo that I made of the song by myself in my apartment. I had to consult that version a few times to work out how the hell I was going to play drums, bass and piano on this and stay in time. Got it worked out. I added strings because I could.

Personally, I love when the drums come in. This is one of my favorite Ben Folds solo tracks. Enjoy.

Ben Folds - Kalamazoo.MP3

You can purchase this song on the original Super D EP.

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