This first audio, is an unfinished version of the song “Shut Your Mouth” with you. If you’re familiar with the original version of the song (from the album “Make Your Move) ~ you might be pretty surprised by how different (and awesome!) it is now ~ complete with slide guitar and a funky rhythm section!
We were *almost* finished recording this song. The sneak-peek version you’re getting now doesn’t have my guitar solo on it yet — so if you’re a guitarist, feel free to wail away and make up your own solo while you listen!
One more thing: this version is not yet mixed — which is another way of saying that the levels, the effects (e.g., reverb), and the arrangement are not in any way finalized. Things could change a lot between now and the final version — or they may change very little.
Here it is — the first single YOU ~ my beloved Ali-Cats / Backstage With Ali peeps ~ helped put into the world!
“Shut Your Mouth and DO Something” was be released worldwide on February 28, 2020 ~ but because you were (and still are 🥰) part of Backstage With Ali you got to listen to it more than two weeks ahead of time.
I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed recording it!
The recording was produced by Seth Atkins Horan and features Jimmy Paxson on drums & Jonathan Flaugher on bass. I played all the guitars and sang all the vocals
For this last audio, I managed to find a bit of time to re-work “Shut Your Mouth and Do Something” into a high-energy instrumental track featuring a meeeeean blues-harp. I’ve included that for you, as well as the story leading to the new version.
After the success of the vocal version of “Shut Your Mouth and Do Something” (getting selected for 2 official Spotify playlists as well as Joe Bonamassa’s blues playlist), I wanted to get the song out to music supervisors in the hope of placing (“syncing”) it in films & TV. However, the lyrics for the song aren’t very “sync-friendly” (basically, it’s harder to get your music in film & TV with “negative” lyrics than instrumentals or “positive” lyrics).
So a few weeks ago, Seth and I re-arranged the instrumental track for “Shut Your Mouth and Do Something” to make it as “sync-friendly” as possible (basically, making it a bit shorter and catchier).
But it was still missing something without the vocals.
So I hired the amazing blues harmonica player Trent Williamson to play over the song ~ he recorded several tracks at home, and Seth and I got to go through all his ideas to choose the best ones and put together a new instrumental mix.
I’m thrilled with the result and am very hopeful we can place the song in some cool projects…fingers crossed! 🤞