Hey Joe

For the last week or so I've been working on recording a 'vintage sounding' version of "Hey Joe" in the sonic flavor of Jimi Hendrix's version of 1966. "Hey Joe" has always been a song I liked but especially after I discovered Tim Rose's version. I used to play his at home and anywhere I'd go. Sometimes I'd have it going for hours at a time. To me, his take on the song is the penultimate version. I like Hendrix's version as well and both versions are similar in terms of tempo and feel. Major difference being that Hendrix's version is all-out electric and Rose's is acoustic.

So when I found out about an opportunity to record a period piece version of the song for a special project I jumped on it. Fortunately I had just enough time to do it and I started and completed within 6 days, just before the deadline.

I'm a fan of Big Brother and the Holding Company when they backed Janis Joplin so my sound may have been influenced by theirs. I made a version that sounds rock, bluesy and psychedelic (perhaps) but definitely reminiscent of the late 1960's. In fact, if the recording weren't mine and I heard it and had to guess the year I would say 1968. Comes complete with fuzz guitar! Finally put that Analogman Peppermint Fuzz pedal to solid use!! It's a superb pedal for that 60's fuzz sound. Best one I've tried and I highly recommend it if you can find one.

My 'Hey Joe' comes complete with 3 layers of electric guitar, an organ track, bass, drums and vocal. Speaking of drums, I finally experimented with recording the drum part on 3 different tracks: one for the kick drum, one for the overhead mic and one for the snare. I'm still experimenting with tweaking the snare sound. It sounds good in the latter portion of the song where the overall volume is louder. But I do have more control over the overall sound of the drum set by recording this way. And since I had the drums and mic's all set up I went ahead and recorded a new drum track for my Christmas song, "It's Christmas." I have not yet mixed that new part into the song. One additional item of note is that I used my piccolo snare for this recording session. I had tried my full size snare but was not pleased with the recorded sound so I went with the piccolo and the move generated rather good results.

Anyway, let's get to the song. I uploaded it to soundcloud.com:



I also uploaded onto YouTube a mono version of it that includes the sound of old vinyl in order to simulate an old record:




The photo I created to look like album art from that era (minus the outfit discrepancies of course). It was an all-out effort which I found fun and very rewarding.