A while back I worked on an interesting record for my friend Joe Flood who is a multi instrumentalist and great songwriter who’s tunes have been covered by a lot of people including the Bottle Rockets, Levon Helm and the Band. His latest project was recordings of his own English translations of the songs of noted French writer Georges Brassens. Translating lyrics is a very tricky thing. You have to get the meaning of the song across and you also like to preserve some rhymes. I can’t speak French beyond menu speak but I love Joe’s translations of Brassens lyrics. Part of the project was done in Brooklyn at my place, Cowboy Technical Services but the other half was done at Mark Dann’s in Woodstock, NY. We had Garth Hudson on the session. I could talk about his musicality endlessly but rather than continue to type I’m posting this clip I grabbed with my iPhone while Garth was doing a melodica overdub.
If you are wondering how all of that could possibly fit into a song you can follow this link to hear Joe’s finished version of Brassens’ “The Gorilla” at Bandcamp.
