[NEWLY REMASTERED version for D/L here: http://kat330.bandcamp.com/track/haunted-house-of-the-rising-sun-newly-remastered]
Heard on WFMU here http://wfmu.org/playlists/shows/59351 and here http://wfmu.org/playlists/shows/59384 on Feb 10 & 12, 2015 [Liz Berg DJ] and Oct. 30, 2014: http://wfmu.org/playlists/shows/57901 and here: http://www.mixcloud.com/nick-thomas2/a-happy-halloween-specialsounds-from-the-cloudredruth-radio31-oct-2013/
October 17, 2013
The back story on my arrangement here: I had recorded the guitar, bongos and lead vocal several weeks earlier. Then last week in the middle of the night when my mojo was still in slo-mo, the Muse visited and sang into my ear the haunting strains of Big Brother & the Holding Co.'s "Summertime" intro. I quickly grokked that a takeoff on this theme would open up my rendition of "The House of the Rising Sun." And, much as I echoed Marty Robbins' "El Paso" in my "El Preso" cover, you'll also hear a musical allusion to Gershwin's "Summertime" melody in the first verse.
Given the song's setting, I decided on New Orleans brass and Dixieland reeds for delivering the Holding Co. riff, but not until I started layering the sections for the intro did I begin to hear a dirge, a NOLA street funeral procession, which evolved into this unique take on the classic folk ballad: The singer has recently died, and her spirit is accompanying her casket as it moves down the street, wailing of and warning against all the wrong turns her too brief life has taken. By the time the organ part enters, the marching band and casket have arrived at the brothel for the wake. And it is there, back in the House of the Rising Sun, where the singing ghost will remain to haunt the House and its patrons ever after.
Something else I'm doing in this arrangement is loosely tying the characters to specific instrument lines. No "Peter and the Wolf" scope mind you, but the mother's the clarinet, the father's the trombone, baby sister's the flute, and I am the high French whor—I mean, HORN! ☼;)
