Beck Covers Skip Spence Album With Wilco and Feist
- Posted on Nov 13th 2009 10:00AM by John D. Luerssen
- Comments (0)
Beck's Record Club continues to astound music fans. After tackling 'The Velvet Underground & Nico' and 'Songs of Leonard Cohen' over the past several months, rock's favorite chameleon has announced his club's third installment: Skip Spence's 1969 album 'Oar'. If that's not enough, he's lured Wilco, Feist and Jamie Lidell to assist him with his rendering of the late Moby Grape founder's cult favorite. The lead track, 'Little Hands' is free for the taking on Beck's website."We're five months into the Record Club project now," Beck wrote when announcing 'Oar'. "This one took place last June when Wilco was in town for the release of their new eponymous album. They came by after a long day filming a TV appearance and still managed to put down eight songs with us. Jamie Liddell was in the studio with me working on his new record. Leslie Feist happened to be in town editing her documentary and heard we were all getting together."
"Recording took place at Sunset Sound Studios in the room where the Stones did a lot of 'Exile on Main Street' (and looking at the records on the walls it appeared that the Doobie Brothers recorded most of their output there too)," Beck adds. "Sitting in on drums, we had James Gadson, who's played on most of the Bill Withers records and on songs like 'Express Yourself' and 'I Will Survive.' Jeff Tweedy's son Spencer played additional drums. Also, Brian Lebarton, from the last two Record Club sessions is back."
For those who didn't know, Beck describes his Record Club as "an informal meeting of various musicians to record an album in a day. The album chosen to be reinterpreted is used as a framework. Nothing is rehearsed or arranged ahead of time. A track is put up here once a week. As you will hear, some of the songs are rough renditions, often first takes that document what happened over the course of a day as opposed to a polished rendering. There is no intention to 'add to' the original work or attempt to recreate the power of the original recording. Only to play music and document what happens. And those who aren't familiar with the albums in question will hopefully look for the songs in their definitive versions."




