New Music: Holiday Stan Rogers & Flaming Lips Combo Song!

The 2011 Zunior Holiday BlenderI don’t blame you for thinking that headline sounds a bit ridiculous, but it’s true: we’ve got a new tune on Zunior’s annual charity Christmas compilation that blends the melody of Stan Rogers’ classic “Barrett’s Privateers” with the lyrics of The Flaming Lips “Christmas At the Zoo.”

Not only that, but our song is in amazingly zany company, as our good friends The Burning Hell have combined “Summer of ’69” with “Deck the Halls” and Nick Zubeck’s blend of “Sunglasses At Night” and “Silent Night” is amazing.

In case it’s not obvious, the mandate for this year’s charity collection (Zunior does a holiday compilation every year to benefit the Daily Bread Food Bank) was to take a revered Canadian song and overlay the lyrics of a Christmas classic. Our interpretation of those two things was a bit more loose than some, but I’ll be damned if it wasn’t the most fun we’ve had in the studio in a long time. On paper it’s definitely the weirdest thing we’ve ever recorded, but I’d like to think we added our own strange holiday flare to the whole thing.

Check out the compilation at Zunior.com for only $8.88 and get some crazy original music for the holidays along with the warm & fuzzies of supporting a great charity.

New Music: Thirteen – Big Star Cover

Dog Is Blue - Thirteen (a Big Star Cover)Boom. Married. We’re now officially “Canada’s garage-folk power couple” (I can put things in quotation marks that only I said, right?). In honour of our recent nuptials (held at the amazing Daverne farm house where we did some recording last year), we covered our favourite song/first dance— Big Star’s “Thirteen” (originally released on the amazing album #1 Record in 1972).

It’s been recorded over the years by some amazing bands and we’ve always wanted to put our spin on it. In this case, that involved the usual amount of homemade guitar pedals, weird old drum machines ($10 Yamaha RX17 mostly) as well as throwing the entire thing through a hand-me-down Yamaha MT-8X cassette recorder with some homemade delay and wah for good measure. Of course, as usual, Laura’s voice is the real standout here…

The result is something we’re really happy with, as it’s different than any version we’ve heard.

Listen by clicking the “play” button below, or download it for keeps by clicking the arrow on the right side. Thanks for listening!

Thirteen (a Big Star Cover) by Dog Is Blue

New Music: Gordon Lightfoot Cover for Canada Day!

Happy Canada Day, folks. In honour of the Great White North’s big day, Herohill asked us to be part of an amazing collection of musicians paying tribute to one of the nations most revered songwriters, Gordon Lightfoot.

He’s got a lot of material to choose from, so after a few days of listening to the LPs in our collection we couldn’t resist trying our hand at “High and Dry,” from the Sundown album. The melody in this tune is top notch. I hope we did it justice!

New Music: Construction & Destruction Tribute!

Here Comes the Gold: A Tribute to the Music of Construction & DestructionThis album has been a very well kept secret for a long time and our track in particular has been ready since February, but it’s finally time to unveil the excellent tribute to our good friends Construction & Destruction!

A Nova Scotia-based duo made up of David Trenaman and Colleen Collins, Construction & Destruction are a) an excellent band with over 4 albums under their belt and b) two of the kindest people on the planet. We’re also playing a bunch of shows with them in eastern Canada in May, so it’s been tough keeping this project a secret through all the email back-and-forth.

Not only does this album pay tribute to one of our favourite bands, but it also features covers of THAT band, by our OTHER favourite bands (like The Burning Hell, Shotgun Jimmie & Wax Mannequin to name but a few), so I can’t tell you how excited we are to be a part of it.

We chose the C&D tune “The Oracle,” from their most recent album, the excellent Mutatis Mutandis, as it totally knocked us off our feet when we first heard it. Lyrics like this don’t come around every day. I highly recommend checking out the original, as Colleen’s conviction and delivery is unparalleled.

Listen to our version below and pick up the whole shebang from Zunior.com…oh, and did I mention that all the money goes right to the band themselves? I don’t even think they know about the album yet, so it’ll be a nice surprise if people jump on this (as they should)!

The Oracle by Dog Is Blue

Don’t Think Twice: Ancient Bob Dylan Cover

Sketch of Bob Dylan2005. Taiwan. I’ve got a thrift-store Vivitar camcorder microphone* balancing off the back of a kitchen chair. The acoustic guitar in my hands is an Ibanez that I bought used and wouldn’t make the trip back to Canada with me.

Always one of my favourite songs, this recording of “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” is one of the earliest recordings I’ve got that I don’t cringe at. Played and sung in one take (screw-ups intact) while hoping the mic didn’t fall off the chair, the backwards guitar and sputtering distortion was added afterward.

It’s funny the things you find buried in your FTP when building a new website…

Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright by Dog Is Blue

*The box showed a very happy blonde with a ridiculous 80’s perm. Best $8 I’ve ever spent.

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