When you’re learning cover songs, you don’t always have to play them or sing them the same way on the album. When I watch people play cover songs on youtube/facebook, most of them don’t play cover songs the same way on the album. A lot of times musicians would change the arrangements around so that the song can fit their voice. Can’t sing the really high notes??? Don’t be afraid to transpose and go lower in key.

That’s what a lot of music artists do with their own songs really. There are a lot of national bands and artists that never play the song the same way twice. Go listen to any band and artists and you’ll hear that they play so many different versions of their hits especially David Bowie. There are a lot of times when Bowie sung his hits live he transposed to lower keys ’cause he couldn’t sing high anymore. Plus, many bands and artists came up with different versions of their songs live to make things interesting.

Back to doing cover songs, I think musicians playing the songs note for note and doing it the same way on the album is overrated. You don’t have to do cover songs like that. Make the cover songs sound like “you”. That’s what I try to do anyway.

People wonder why I do so many cover songs well it’s ’cause I love doing them for starters. They’re fun to do and I want to show people that I can be a real musician too. There’s something about doing covers. I just want to learn all the songs that I’ve loved over the years. They don’t have to be just big hits that everyone knows although, I do like playing big radio hits. I just do cover songs for fun and that’s all, though.

Don’t take yourself serious as a musician. Just play and enjoy.

Kev

Just a little preview of my upcoming Bowie tribute live stream show that I’m working on. Just to show you a little preview that way I can show you that I’m really working on it and planning on it.

Me doing “Starman”. It’s a work=in progress so it’s not perfect. It’s a hard one to sing ’cause David sings really high in the chorus but I’m getting it, though.

Enjoy.

Kev

So here is the list of albums I got from Itunes this month… enjoy…

• David Bowie “David/Live” – I have most of Bowie’s studio albums but don’t have much of his live albums. He’s got a lot of live albums so I thought, why not start now? I’ve heard that “David/Live” is his best live album so I went for that one. It’s a double live album that was released in 1974, a classic album and gonna listen to it this week.
• David Bowie “Young Americans” – Bowie has 25 studio albums in his entire discography and I just about got them all so I added another album of his “Young Americans” an older album that I don’t have yet.
• ZZ Top “ZZ Top’s First Album” – Been getting into ZZ Top a lot lately and they’re getting addicting so I grabbed another album of theirs. Their very first record.
• The Violent Femmes (1983 self titled debut) – Used to have this album on CD years ago so I decided to get it again. Love this record. It’s a classic album and had to get it. Listened to it yesterday during my walk and still love the album.
• Dire Straits (1978 self titled debut) – I have most Dire Straits albums and trying to get them all too so I grabbed their first album. Love Dire Straits. Mark Knopfler is a talented guy.
• Ac/Dc “Dirty Deeds, Done Dirt Cheap” – Grabbed another old Ac/Dc album and also been trying to collect their whole album catalog, almost there too.

I love music and love supporting bands & artists regardless of their political views. It’s the music that matters most.

Kev

Over the weekend I ordered some stuff from amazon… I ordered 4 films on Blu Ray and 3 Batman graphic novels.

While I was browsing through amazon over the weekend, I was looking at the BluRay movie section and was trying to decide what movies I wanted. There were plenty that I wanted. There were plenty of new releases that I wanted to see but I was amazed that most of the new releases were out of stock. Even a lot of older films and bluray box sets that I wanted were out of stock.

Crazy. It’s understandable though ’cause you can’t go shopping at stores like Best Buy, FYE, and Barnes & Noble. Those 3 major retail stores all sell BluRay movies and you can’t go out and buy that stuff at the store for the time being… so people are hoarding BluRay movies on amazon.

This is also why you see those amazon cards being sold out at stores too. You can’t go shopping anywhere, can’t go to the malls so people do all their shopping on amazon. So if you’re shopping at amazon, you’ll have to expect to see a lot of things “out of stock”.

So yeah, I ended up picking 4 BluRay movies and 3 Batman graphic novels. The 3 Batman graphic novels that I got were in a triple box set. I’ll show you all what I got when I get these things dropped off here which they should get dropped off sometime this week. I’ll post a picture of these things on my Instagram.

I also purchased 6 more albums for my Itunes.

Why am I doing all this digital shopping lately? Well, with this country lockdown and shit, might as well ’cause what are you gonna do? Can’t do anything out there so I gotta find ways to entertain myself too. Gotta do something with yourself. I’m doing my best to defeat boredom too.

Kev

Yesterday, I went out for a long walk throughout my small hometown of Middle Falls since the weather was so nice out… weather is so nice out that you can finally go outside without a coat on. I went walking without a coat on yesterday and it’s that type of weather again today.

Today is a lot warmer and I’ll probably go out for another long walk today. Why not, ya know? There is no gym and each time the weather is decent, I’ll go out for a walk just to get my cardio in and try my best to keep my muscle. Also, to stay in shape and lose bodyfat too.

As I went out for my walk yesterday, I’m noticing that pretty much every house I went by, you see people outdoors. Ya know, people just sitting outside in their lawns enjoying the fresh air, also you see people doing yard work, doing projects outside, kids outside playing and all that stuff. I’m sure you’ll be seeing more of that.

Why is that, you ask? Well, most families and people are so used to working all the time and since they are out of work… they’re bored just like the rest of us. Just fucking bored sitting in their homes all day during rainy and cold weather during Spring. Now that it finally feels like fucking Spring, everybody is outside… doing their best to try and defeat boredom by doing stuff outside.

The news and Democrats successfully pushed Social distancing and facemask wearing, they got away with that garbage and now those phonies are trying to push “stay indoors” which they are failing, though.

I thought it was amazing to see almost every home I went by and with people outside… all over the street. You hardly ever see that since people are working week after week so they can keep their homes.

I hear them, though. I’m the same way, I’m bored sitting indoors myself so whenever the weather’s nice… I’ll go for my long walks or take a bike ride or just do yardwork some.

The news are now trying to freak us out by going outside, just their sneaky way of trying to get us to stay indoors but it’s not gonna work. Can see you now how the news and the government can easily control every aspect of our lives? Hope you’re all enjoying your first taste of that. People get in trouble for going outdoors and get frowned upon which is insane, in my opinion but fuck ’em.

You can’t tell people what to do and control them. I don’t agree with social distancing and face-mask wearing but I do it anyways just keep the panic-pushers and Doomsdayers happy. I’m not afraid of this virus at all ’cause the numbers are inaccurate and this virus can easily be recovered from. Nobody wants to talk about the high recovery numbers… they all want to talk about the high death numbers which are all lies.

I see all this as a social experiment by the government… you don’t think they have that power to get rid of our social freedoms? Of course they do. Those days of meeting new people in public places could be over for good.

We gotta fight back for our rights which all them protests is a good thing. It’s time to open the country back up. I’m fed up with it myself. The country lockdown was pointless, unnecessary and it was nothing but abuses of power by the government.

Kev

Whenever I do my first live acoustic show, I’m going to use my handheld Everio camera to do that with by hooking that up to my PC… also, I’m planning to hook up my Focusrite audio interface to the computer so I can plug in my guitar and microphone… that way I can sound amplified and you can really hear me through the speakers. I’m gonna figure all this out… this will be a big time live performance… all of it.

So for my first live show which will be a David Bowie tribute, I’m going to really rehearse these songs so I can try not to mess up guitar parts, singing and lyrics and all that stuff. I won’t forget lyrics ’cause I’ll be reading the lyrics off of notebook paper anyways… it’s okay to do that on a live stream at home. Bowie wrote a lot of lyrics so it will be hard to memorize his lyrics… I only have some of his songs memorized by heart, though.

Doing my first live stream show, I thought it would be cool to do David Bowie first since he’s my favorite artist and it’ll happen real soon. I think people will be surprised that I can nail his songs and do ’em justice which is the goal.

I may do tribute shows of other bands & artists, though sometime in the future I may do Johnny Cash ’cause I wanna do a tribute for him too. I’d also like to do Nirvana, Led Zeppelin, Metallica, John Fogerty/CCR and the Beatles too.

I will also do live stream shows with me doing various cover songs as well.

As for original music???? Yeah, I definitely plan on doing live stream shows of nothing but me performing my originals. I’m gonna wait to do that when I write a new batch of originals ’cause I don’t want to be doing just older songs. I’ll perform my older songs, yeah but I want to perform new songs as well and I want to get back into songwriting at some point.

This live stream show will probably be a regular thing… it won’t be just for this country lockdown ’cause I’ll always be doing live streams ’cause I’ve been planning it for years anyways.

Kev