This EP was made as the result of the Kickstarter campaign I ran in 2017, along with a companion EP of original songs. What was particularly fun about this project was deciding how close to stay to the original and how much to try and make it my own. I'll break that down here:

All Night (for Ian Fredericks) [Originally by The Dodos]
Being that The Dodos are a guitar and drums duo, and this is one of their more minimalist songs, I didn't want to embellish on it too much. I loved the driving intensity of the instrumentals in the original, so I wanted to maintain that and let my own touch come out in the performance and the production rather than in any compositional changes.

Cretin Hop (for Jeff Thieleke) [Originally by Ramones]
Who would want to change anything about the Ramones? Similar to "All Night", I chose not to stray too far on this one. The only major change I made was adding a couple lead guitar lines to the last half of each verse--for some reason I just heard those there when I was working on the final mixing, so I went back and added those riffs as a final touch.

Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness (for Rick Maples) [Originally by The Smashing Pumpkins]
Rick specifically told me he wanted an acoustic guitar version of this song, and I loved that idea. I had to downtune my acoustic a half step and record it across a couple takes, one of primarily chords and one of the lead melody (somewhat mimicking the left and right hands of the piano). Listening back to the original, I realized that it's actually produced to be kind of thin and the strings sound incredibly fake. I wanted to maintain that aspect, so I added a few synth layers on top of the guitar.

Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town (for Amy Bowlin) [Originally by Pearl Jam]
I cheated a bit on this one as Amy picked Pearl Jam, but I picked the song. This stuck out as a more doable Pearl Jam song for my style considering it's acoustic and the vocals are more even--Eddie Vedder is a hard vocalist to match, so I wanted the song to be realistic for my voice. Once I started working on it though, I was struck by how random the vocal melody and phrasing seem to be. It's a little all over the place, but Eddie's gruff presentation makes it work, which was difficult for me to pull off with a cleaner vocal style.

Big Bird (for Drew Allen) [Originally by AJJ]
This was probably the most intimidating song of the set. Sean Bonnette has such a unique musical persona, both in writing and performance, that I wasn't sure what to do with this song. I considered doing a smoother, piano-based version, but instead went with something closer to the original so that I could capture the same energy and ethos. I felt like that's what the lyrics required in order to be communicated properly, and the lyrics in this song (and AJJ songs in general) are crucial. What made this particularly tough is that Sean can be yowling off-key and somehow it just works, but I can't get away with that vocally. I think this makes my version sound sadder, where the original has a prophetic, satirical edge to it.

Slob (for Jeremy Nifras) [Originally by Weezer]
For me, Maladroit is easily the most underrated Weezer album. I love it, and was excited when Jeremy picked this deep cut for me to tackle. When I listened back to the original in planning my cover, I felt like there was a punkier, more aggressive energy simmering in the writing that got covered up in the album's clean production. I wanted that to come through and give an idea of what this song may have sounded like if it was on Pinkerton.

You Make My Dreams (for Brandon Beem) [Originally by Hall & Oates]
There's no way I was going to try to do this similar to the original at all, that would have been awful. Noisy, raw punk just felt like the only way to go.