HONKIN’ ATCHA
(a cover of DRIVE MY CAR originally by the Beatles)
The year was 2000, and Paul Lusky and I were up late. We were musicians, and that’s just the way we lived. I got out of work one night at about 1am, and he and I drove up to his new place in the hills of Nothern CT in the back of the property. We needed to do a soundcheck. There were cobwebs, old tires, old rugs, a few sawhorses. Real barn stuff. It was great! He had a Roland VS880 mixer/recorder and a degree from Berklee. I had an Ovation Adamas and a lack of fear like you read about. Soundcheck? Hmmmm. I’d been listening to Taj Majal a whole lot around then, and just up and decided (with my 2am voice after working a 10 hour shift) that we would try DRIVE MY CAR. What you hear is the first thing we did that night. This is my warm blanket. My happiest moment in music. Paul is playing beautifully phrased tasteful lead guitar on a Black Epiphone Acoustic direct into the board. and we mic’d up the Ovation to give it some atmosphere. The whole thing was improvised, especially the part at the end where the moment turns into almost-parody and the subject of the song stops beeping his horn at the girl and just yells WOO-HOOO! I frickin’ love it.
Paul thought we were done after the ‘woohoo’ but I had some utterly preposterous and regally British sounding acoustic guitar to add.
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