News about ‘Covers With Friends’ launch
After a long time without news, the launch of Jason Manns’ Covers With Friends album is coming close. As we announced last year, Jensen joined once more to a musical project with his friend Jason. According with the page dedicated to the project, the release date is scheduled to September 1st for now and the songs that Jensen recorded are already known among the fans: Simple Man and The Weight.
There will be more news soon, but for now Jason Manns shared a photo of Jensen and their experience recording these songs.
That photo was taken up on the SPN set in Vancouver. Like last time, I actually had the really fun opportunity to record Jensen’s vocals on set while they were filming. We rolled in to set a few hours early and before wardrobe and makeup and all that other crazy TV land stuff, we just jammed a bit! The specific process was Jensen recorded a scratch guitar track, then sang to it. We did a few takes of the vocals, but I think most of what we used was the first one to be honest. Then I took the vocal into the studio in LA and built the instrumentation around it.
When we were trying to decide what song we’d use for him we went back and forth through a dozen great songs but nothing was really popping out at us. Then sometime into the conversation (the day before we were to record!) J mentioned he had learned this song called Simple Man and he played it for me. There was no doubt when I heard it that it was the one. Not only that, I wanted to capture that feeling right there as I heard it. It was an intimate, kinda raw performance. No drums, no bass, a very simple production just to focus on the voice and the song, because it’s such a great song. We did of course give it some production, with some lead guitar, and filled out the sound with a little extra rhythm guitar, and for the Piece de resistance… I brought in a gentle but moving cello half way through. I’d say production wise, this is one of the songs I’m most proud of on the album. J really nailed it, of course, and I’m positive you guys are gonna love it.
It was kind of a crazy coincidence as well, because by now I’m sure all of you have seen the season finale of Season 11, which they were filming then. (if not spoiler alert!) Dean’s mom makes a poignant appearance in the episode. Of course this song starts off “Momma told me, when I was young” and the whole song is about advice the singer got from his mom. Needless to say, it added quite a bit to the song in my opinion. He actually filmed the scenes with his (Dean’s) mom the same day we recorded that song. So in keeping with the close ties this song has with his character, and the crazy coincidences that occurred… there is a little SPN surprise included on the track that I think is awesome. and I’ll tell that story in a later update. I don’t wanna give away all the fun stuff at once!
I’ll also include a snippet of the audio of that track when i tell the fun story, come to think of it there’s actually 2 fun stories, as we are close to finishing with the masters, I’ll wait because I want it to sound perfect when you hear it for the first time!
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