Beta Band - Dry the Rain (Semi-Fingerstyle Cover with Vocals)

"I will now sell five copies of 'The Three EPs' by The Beta Band," John Cusack says during a memorable scene in High Fidelity, and then he puts on Dry the Rain and everyone in his record store starts swaying to the groove. He no doubt sold far more than five copies if you add in all the viewers like me who had never heard of The Beta Band before but checked them out afterwards.

In the Hulu reboot of High Fidelity, the scene is relived with a contemporary track (Lonely by Swamp Dogg). Dry the Rain is played in the next episode, a nice Easter Egg for fans of the movie. Looking back at the original scene is a reminder too that Cusack mispronounced the name of the band -- it's not "bay-ta" like we pronounce the Greek letter in America, it's "beet-a" like they pronounce it in the UK, where the band is from (Scotland).

Hearing it again made me wonder if I could play it. I never considered it before since I always thought of it as trip-hop and I play acoustic roots guitar. But Beta Band was also categorized as "folktronica" so why not try a semi-fingerstyle folk arrangement. So there it is.

My pitch problems lead me to double track my vocals, as I have done in the past on some songs. The primary audio and video track are a single unedited take of the entire song. I've added parts of two other recordings on top of that -- the first half of the double track is from one take, and then the remainder is from another take. I recorded four takes, using three of the four in the final video.

There is only one thing that I changed in the main track -- I sang "I will be all right" instead of "I will be your light". In the alternate track I sang the correct lyric. The incorrect words are faded out of the audio track so all that remains is the correct lyric from the second track. But if you read my lips, "all right"!

The guitar gets double tracked too because everything goes into a single condenser mic, but that doesn't really make that much difference other than making it sound like there's echo or chorus on the guitar. The guitar is a Jorma Kaukonen signature Martin M-30. The location is Lake Naomi in NE PA, where I've recorded a number of songs the past week while sequestered during the current pandemic.

[DubiSilver]

Thanks so much for the positive feedback!

[joelball]

This is a very good cover! I'd recently gotten the urge to try to cover this song, and your performance is definitely inspiring me even more. Your voice sounds really nice. Keep it up, you've got talent!

[juliansiegel]

Damn, no comments for this? Thats a shame