A collection of European artists including Sparklehorse collaborator and friend Nina Persson have released a wonderful tribute album called Hello Mark Linkous. Please check out their Facebook Page for details…
Hey Everyone,
Happy New Year!!! It’s been an awfully long time since we’ve had a new post here but tonight we have something to make up for it. Our very good friend John Murry has shared his wonderful cover of “Shade And Honey” with us. Hope you all enjoy it.
Shade And Honey (by John Murry)
Produced by Mark Pistel and John Murry at Room Number Five, San Francisco, CA
Updated January 17: John asked us to enable downloads for this track, so you can now download the MP3 by mousing over the area just to the right of the play button and clicking on the magic arrow. Cheers…
Hi Everyone,
Sorry, it’s been awhile since we’ve had an update here. We’ve been weathering a storm of sorts, but bluer skies seem to be on the horizon…
For those of you waiting for the “Last Box of Sparklers” tribute album matters to get sorted out, we have a preview of Mercury Rev’s take on “Sea of Teeth”…
Our featured video of the day is a live-in-the-bedroom cover of Sunshine by UK outfit We Show Up On RadaR. It’s from a couple of years back and it’s a very pretty one, as Mark would have likely said himself…
We Show Up On RadaR website: http://wsuor.com/
Tonight’s featured video is a great recent live performance of Someday I Will Treat You Good by Rob Williams and his band:
Rob used to front Richmond based Joe Buck Jr who covered the song back in 1996 on their debut album Used To Be Somebody…
“The cover was added at the last minute as Mark Linkous fell ill while on tour in Europe. The plan was for local bands to record versions of his songs to send to him in the hospital to let him know we were thinking of him. I don’t know if the tape was ever made for Mark, but we added our cover to the CD.”
In fact this would be the very first time an artist would release a Sparklehorse cover!
(I’m not counting Cracker’s Sick Of Goodbyes or Susanna Hoff’s Happy Place as both predate Mark’s own versions…)
Of course countless more covers have followed over the years…we have attempted to document all those to receive an official release in our Covers section…
Rob Williams’ latest solo album A Place In The Sun was released earlier in the year. Engineered and produced by John Morand at Sound Of Music; the record also features contributions from two more Sparklehorse alumni: Alan Weatherhead and Miguel Rodriguez-Urbiztondo…
Daniel Johnston’s latest album Death Of Satan was released earlier this month on the Spanish label Munster Records:
Recorded five years ago with Waller friends Jason and Bridget, this is Daniel’s third full-length release as Danny And The Nightmares. Sadly, it will also be the last. Jason, who also produced the album, passed away in 2011 following a sudden illness aged just 36.
Back in 2007 the band contributed a wonderful cover of Most Beautiful Widow In Town to the Sparklehorse tribute album That Horse Yonder. The album which was curated and released by the mysterious Slight Records is long out of print but we are pleased to share Danny’s contribution here for a limited time only…
Danny & The Nightmares – Most Beautiful Widow:
Danny & The Nightmares – Most Beautiful Widow
Here’s a few words from Jason about the track:
“Recorded the song with Danny last night. I think you guys will like it. Danny really delivered a nice vocal track to our surprise. So far it’s vocals, the acoustic guitar, a farfisa organ, and bells. We’re gonna see if the quartet will do some string stuff on it this weekend. We thought it would be funny to take a sparse original and do a lavish cover version. Sort of like what SH do with Danny’s stuff.”
It would also be with The Nightmares that Daniel would share a live stage with Mark for the very first time when the band opened for Sparklehorse in Houston in September 2006.
Watch out for a series of Golden Crows posts coming soon exploring the connections between these two great artists and sharing a few rarities along the way…