Fresh Bread

Doveman & Samidon - Le Poisson Rouge 06.18.09

Doveman, Samidon, and a few members of The National played an amazing show at Le Poisson Rouge recently.  I am a big fan of Doveman so I was very excited to shoot it for Brooklynvegan.  Check my pics out here.

Doveman Wears A Musical Costume For His Next Album

Early on in my NYC residency, a hushed song called "Honey" was all the rage.  And for good reason.  Thomas Bartlett, brain child of Doveman, is a talented singer songwriter who released the great The Acrobat in 2005.  Everyone and their mother liked it (check the 'Previous Posts' section of this post).  He's a musician's musican and so were the players filling out the band.

Fast forward to 2008.  Gotta say his new project makes me very excite...very.  That's before I even found out about the reason behind him covering not one, not two, but all songs of the soundtrack to Footloose.

When I was very young, my half-sister Jenny died tragically. She was a teenager, and it was the 80's. She left behind a wardrobe of brightly colored clothes, rainbow stickers, life-size paintings, doodles on lined paper, and hundreds of tapes. These constitute most of my memories of her. It's sad for me to look at these things, and usually I don't. But a couple of summers ago I found a tape of hers with a startling cover photograph - this was Footloose. I couldn't stop listening: it was a portrait of 80's love, desire, pain, freedom, and frenzy; of being a teenager in a time of change. By listening, I could step into Jenny's shoes, see things from her vantage point. I could be emancipated by rock and roll and walkmen, just as she had been. We could listen together.

I asked my friend Thomas to cover the album, which, sheltered as he is, he had never heard before. I was clear that I wanted to him to cover the whole album - the point wasn't to rework any one song, but to re-imagine the picture they made together. With a new Footloose we could reply to the past, tell our own story about being young. This is what he made.

So far I really dig this track:  "Lets Hear It For The Boy".mp3

Download the entire album for free here.