Donny McCaslin talks Bowie covers

 

“And prayer can’t travel so far these days”            

 

As you know, Donny McCaslin’s latest release, Beyond Now, is out today. Donny and his band are the musicians behind the sound of David Bowie’s ★ album.

 

Here’s an excerpt taken from a piece that we posted from The Guardian earlier this month…

 

 

The experience of creating music with Bowie proved so deep, and its aftermath so jarring, that McCaslin decided to turn his new album, Beyond Now, out 14 October, into a tribute. It includes several transformative covers of Bowie songs, including Warszawa from Low, and A Small Plot of Land from Outside, along with a song McCaslin wrote inspired by a piece Bowie left off Blackstar.

 

 

The uncommonly tall saxophonist has spoken to us about both of those Bowie covers.

 

 

WARSZAWA

We started performing Warszawa in mid-January. It was a raw, difficult time emotionally and playing that song every night was a way to channel all those feelings into the music. As Jason Lindner said, Warszawa was a bridge between David’s music and ours. I knew when we played it in January that I wanted to record it for Beyond Now.

 

A SMALL PLOT OF LAND

A Small Plot of Land was the suggestion of Beyond Now’s producer, David Binney. There’s a great version Mike Garson posted from a performance he did with Bowie in 1995; Bowie’s vocal is tremendous. Jeff Taylor killed the vocal on the new version.

 

 

Thank you Mr McCaslin. Stay tuned to Donny’s official page for live dates and the like.

 

Meanwhile, if you missed his DB Deep Cut Of The Day, check it out here.

 

 

FOOTNOTE: All pictures of Donny by Jimmy King. (When we say ALL pictures of Donny by Jimmy King, we don’t mean every picture of Donny that’s ever been taken were taken by Jimmy. But he did take all of the shots for the sleeve of Beyond Now, and, of course, the wonderful picture of Bowie and McCaslin that we’ve used today.)

 

 

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