WIP Weekend – Cover Songs

Push Play please. Thanks.

I got so jealous of all the cool projects from last weekend, that I had to figure out how to post some of my own. I have mixed feelings about playing cover songs, but they’re a great way to practice without straining creatively all the time, and sometimes you hear that song that just gets your feet and fingers moving.

There are a few schools of thought on how to play covers, whether to stay as true as possible to the original tune, or to deviate as much as you feel like and make it your own, and I definitely fall in the latter camp. There’s something about the experiment of putting a song on different instruments or in different moods that I find really fun.

Ideally this all shakes out with a few more instruments and into a lovely video with King George frolicking in a park, but at the end of the day, it’s practice and helps push my playing in new or funny directions.

The song, You’ll Be Back, is from Hamilton, the now Pulitzer Prize winning rap musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda. I first heard ukulele artist Molly Lewis sing it, and it’s just the right mix of pop and macabre that I find completely delightful, a deep indication that King George has gone straight round the bend.

Here’s another one, a little slower, kinda fun.