It's Rubber Soul Month here at Tour Songs.  This week we tackle In My Life...

 Rubber Soul Month continues. This week we take on a song that appeared exclusively on the UK version of the album. There is something about this song that screams Yarn, so we had to do it. Ringo sings this tune on the record and he does a great job, it suits his voice perfectly. Although, it was Lennon & McCartney who wrote it. Without further rambling, here is, What Goes On...

 We're up in New England at our buddy, Brad Fulkerson's house in Downtown Portsmouth, NH. This is a great town, we love it. Thanks for having us Fulky. Anyway, Trevor rediscovered The Beatles' Rubber Soul last week. I honestly don't think I have listened to this record in at least 15 years. We deciding we should tackle a few songs off this record for our next few episodes of Tour Songs. Lets get things started with, I'm Looking Through You. Enjoy.

Next week, more Rubber Soul...

 Merry Christmas everybody. This weeks episode is our holiday special. Ever since Yarn started hitting the road we've been making stops at a cabin in Lake George to spend the night. There was a TV & VCR in the cabin, but there was no reception in the mountains, so we had to make do with the VCR. The only VHS in the place was Christmas Vacation, so anytime we would spend the night, we would pop in the movie and fast-forward to the "Clark Griswold stuck in the attack scene" so we could listen to Ray Charlessing Spirit of Christmas, then rewind and repeat as many times as we could stand. I guess it is about time we sat down and played this song ourselves.

 Yarn loves The Infamous Stringdusters. These guys have been really great to us. They've gotten on stage with us in Charlotte, invited us to play their first annual festival this past October, played on our record, and just been all around fun musical folks.

We've been listening to their records in our van for a couple years now. And every time this tune comes on I just love it more and more. I figured it was time we sat down to learn it. So we did, at our friend Cameron's house in Fredericksburg, VA. Thanks Cameron for giving us a place to sleep and jam through some tunes.

See you all next week with some Christmas spirit...

 Welcome back friends.  We're back in Stuart's Draft, but it's too damn cold to ride horses and lay outside in the sun, so video blogging it shall be.  We just spent last night playing a show in Ashland, VA followed by a late night drive here to the farm.  I fell a little under the weather on the trip, either from some bad chicken salad or the more likely tainted brown tequila.  Either way, I was having a hard time getting out of bed the next day.  Trevor was kind enough to step in and take the reigns on this one, and take the reigns he did, he nailed it.  Here we are kicking out a version of Bobby Weir's One More Saturday Night, complete with water bottle percussion.  This is our 22nd Tour Songs, and I believe it is the first time the entire band has been involved all at once.  ENJOY EVERYBODY!

 Next stop on the Tour Songs Night Train...

Fredericksburg, VA...

A few weeks back we had the pleasure of playing a show with John Oates in Nashville, TN.  This of course inspired a fairly healthy binge on Hall & Oates tunes in the van over the following weeks.  We we're having a bit of trouble figuring out which tune would adapt best to our acoustic tour songs format, we tried a few, but they just weren't happening.  I've always wanted to try one in particular, so we called the front desk of The Holiday Inn in Holyoke, MA and asked for a late check out, luckily they obliged.  We managed to have time for a 30 minute rehearsal and a few takes on the video, we went with take 1.  Technically it ain't perfect, but I think it's got a vibe.  ENJOY MANEATER!

 Coming at you from Charlotte, NC this go around.  Our dear friends, The Koster's let us spend the night on our way from Asheville to Boone.  We first met Don Koster at The Evening Muse a couple years ago when we played our first show in Charlotte.  Don recognized Rod as the bass player from the band, The Silos.  Turns out The Silos are one of Don's favorites.  All this led to us becoming fast friends and before you know it we were sharing whiskey, trading road stories, and swimming late night in their beautiful backyard oasis.  Don, Laurie, & Dana do more than their part to help struggling artists on the road, and they deserve an enormous amount of gratitude for it.  They have opened their house to so many bands traveling through, it's pretty incredible.  So, thank you Don, Laurie, & Dana.  This one's for you...

 Here we are again, another beautiful sad song headed straight for your ear holes.  Trevor's been listening to quite a bit of music over the last couple weeks in preparation for his wedding next week.  In going through about 5,000 songs on his iPod, he is finding some really great stuff that we all forgot about.  Many of these tunes are not the most appropriate for a wedding, so he's been creating a separate playlist for these tunes, and Yarn's been getting to hear them.  One song really stood out...

 Sorry about the delay, things have gotten a little busy in Yarnland.  We did manage to pull some time  together on our way from Thomas, WV to Charlotte, NC to capture a quick Tour Song for you all.  Rod and I were sitting in the back and Ricky B. put on his favorite song of the tour.  I quickly dug around through all our equipment to pull out a couple of acoustic guitars and within a few short minutes we were recording our latest Tour Song.  

John Prine is a brilliant songwriter and this is a brilliant song, not much more really needs to be said.  The song is based on the story of an Indian actor named Sabu Dastagir who was cast in the 1937 film, Elephant Boy.  Here is our quick "on the road" interpretation...

There was a period of time in my youth that I would turn on the commercial country radio station for a listen. It's been about 16 or 17 years since I would regularly do this, and back then, even though most of the music wasn't great or even good, it was still light years better then what you will hear on the radio today. I mean Garth Brooks had some decent songs, George Strait was already a legend, Dwight Yoakam was certainly the man, but for the most part, it was bad. But there was this one song, it was a hit and rightfully so. I couldn't get enough of it as a kid, and I still can't. And the production of the track doesn't sound anything like early 90's country, this guy was doing his own thing, real american music. Here is Trevor and I's attempt at Kevin Welch's Somethin' Bout You.

 I hope you enjoyed this weeks video blog. We hope to be seeing a lot more of you these next few months. We'll be on the road quite a bit in support of the new record and that should give us a little extra downtime as a band to put together some more Tour Songs.

See you then...

Coming to you live from Lafayette, NJ and in the midst of mixing the upcoming 3rd Yarn record. Were here at Mix-o-Lydian Studios with our favorite studio owner and engineer, Mr. Don Sternecker. While Don pulls together a nice mix of "Down On Your Luck", we decided to sit down and learn a Tom Petty tune for all you nice folks.

I've always been a fan of Mr. Petty, in fact I'm not sure i've ever met anyone who doesn't like the man. He's just one of those guys, love ya Tom. And if you've never seen the documentary "Runnin' Down a Dream," go see it, you'll love him even more.

Here's our quick stab at "You Got Lucky."

 We also threw together a version of Van Morrison's "Tupelo Honey." I know it's a bit risky to just try and throw together a Van Morrison tune, some might say a bad idea, but screw it, we had some down time and we were bored. And on top of that our good friend from Columbia, SC so kindly asked us for it. This one's for you Dana.

 See you tomorrow...