Mom! Tim and his friends are picking on Neil (Young) again!

Something funny interesting happened on my journey to assemble cover versions for the recently started We've Got You Covered series on David Bowie: Finding a bluegrass cover of "Under Pressure" I stumbled on the (in)famous Pickin' On series, that has graced Walmart and truck stop check out racks for the better part of thirty years. I vaguely remember seeing a volume or two of those more than twenty years ago, and I dismissively figured them for exactly what they were: A cheap way to produce content for undiscerning music listeners ho'd grab that on their way to pay for their snacks or groceries. What I didn't know was that the series and its endeavors have evolved since their tentative start in 1993. 

Not only has that series grown to encompass hundreds of volumes on all kinds of artists, from Aerosmith to Modest Mouse. But they also upped their game in the early 2000s. The surprise success of 2003 Metallica cover album Fade To Bluegrass by Kenyuckian bluegrass vets Iron Horse led the series to reinvent itself: Instead of giving anonymous studio cracks some instrumental bluegrass versions of known hits to play, they got real bands to do these albums and would now propose fully sung and played albums on current and less current stars from the rock, pop and country world. This isn't a PR blurb, though, so let's cut straight to the chase: I got immersed in the whole Pickin' On deal and came out with a couple of prospective albums, the first of which is our One Buck Record of the day. 

Does this look like a person to pick on? Surprisingly...yes!

The idea to cover Neil Young in a bluegrass idiom is not particularly far-fetched. After all, when Uncle Neil isn't going eletric with Crazy Horse (or, in the last decade, Promise Of The Real), he is most often armed with an acoustic guitar and a set of down-home songs that live between folk and country. So the through line to buegrass is way more obvious than for some of the more surprising acts in the Pickin' On series. Unsurprisingly, the set list covers a healthy number of songs from Harvest (and don't forget to check out Harvest Time, by far the most popular album on this blog) and generally focuses on the early albums of Young's career. 

This album is drawn from two albums from the Pickin On' series. All vocal tracks are by Tim May from an album called A Bluegrass Tribute To Neil Young, while the instrumental tracks are done by a bunch of studio cracks led by multiinstrumentalist David West from, well, Pickin' On Neil Young or the much better alternative title Gettin' High On Neil Young. 

May I?

Tim May has been flatpicking in  Nashville for a quarter century, has toured with Patty Loveless and recorded with Charlie Daniels, and has played in groups Crucial Smith and Plaidgrass, while also maintaining some duos and session work in the capital of country music.West has led bluegrass group The Dead Strings for about a decade and is nowadays mainly producing and doing session work. 

So, what about the music, you say? Well, it's lovely. The songs are, if safe choices, well-chosen and well-played (the only slightly left-field choice is probably On The Beach's "For The Turnstiles"), as far as the instrumentals go, I'm especially fond of opener "Till The Morning Comes" (actually the closing reprise on the original album), on which West plays relatively unsual instruments like a dulcimer and a tabla, which give the song quite a distinctive and atractive sound. 

Go West, Young Man...

Even if the place of origin for the album might be a little iffy for the self-respecting music fan, the music within is not, so go and spend some time with Tim and his friends while they pick on Neil Young...who is helpless, helpless, helpless...(alright, alright, I'll see myself out...)

Edit: The Harvest Time download link has now been updated. [Frankenstein voice: It's aliiiiiiiiive!]