Still Working For Your Smile (new tribute CD by GG Kettel)

Tributes & covers; Leonard's songs on the soundtracks and TV
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jarkko
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Still Working For Your Smile (new tribute CD by GG Kettel)

Post by jarkko »

Image
Image
All songs performed in English by Gerard George Kettel
New tribute album released in Germany by Funky Farm Records

The album at iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/dk/album/still ... 1130351933
The artist on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/geegeekettel
Facebook http://www.facebook.com/geegeekettel
The whole album is also on Spotify

Here we seem to have the first (known) cover version of "Slow"
1988, 1993: Helsinki||2008: Manchester|Oslo|London O2|Berlin|Helsinki|London RAH|| 2009: New York Beacon|Berlin|Venice|Barcelona|Las Vegas|San José||2010: Salzburg|Helsinki|Gent|Bratislava|Las Vegas|| 2012: Gent|Helsinki|Verona|| 2013: New York|Pula|Oslo|||
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jarkko
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Re: Still Working For Your Smile (new tribute CD by GG Kettel)

Post by jarkko »

GG performed also on Hydra in June 2017 to our members, tourists and Hydrians.
His one band band plays guitars, ukulele, charango and harmonica.
The album was recorded in his rolling home studio in Portugal.

Image
Photo by M.R. Addezzio (from the album sleeve)
1988, 1993: Helsinki||2008: Manchester|Oslo|London O2|Berlin|Helsinki|London RAH|| 2009: New York Beacon|Berlin|Venice|Barcelona|Las Vegas|San José||2010: Salzburg|Helsinki|Gent|Bratislava|Las Vegas|| 2012: Gent|Helsinki|Verona|| 2013: New York|Pula|Oslo|||
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Mary72
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Re: Still Working For Your Smile (new tribute CD by GG Kettel)

Post by Mary72 »

Personally, I love most tribute albums and cover versions of Leonard Cohen songs.
GG Kettel made a truthful and honest tribute to our Man.
The melancholic harmonies of his arrangments resonate with the landscapes of loneliness offered by Leonard on his first albums.
We can listen to each fingering of the strings, it invites us to stop and listen, in the true spirit of the troubadour. There's a story to be retold, to be sung again. There is a longing. The essential is here. And his artisty, being a busker, a musician of squares and busy streets, moving like a gypsy, passing by borders and frontiers, GG knows how to catch the attention of his possible public.
There's evidence of life on his personal approach to the chosen songs, as you can understand by the use of the banjo and the charango, a small traditional south american stringed instrument that resembles a ukulele.
"Bird on Wire" is a fantastic example how a song can evoke a specific scenario, so different from Leonard and at the same time so meaningful. It reminds me of Ry Cooder and the character interpreted by Harry Dean Stanton, Travis, walking aimlessly in the deserts of Paris Texas. We don't have the violin of Raffi Hakopian but we have GG's harmonica reinforcing how free that bird wanted to be.
"Everybody Knows" has a lullaby touch where the original suggests a rampant compass, "Slow" is presented almost like a whisper, with a rustic candency of a lonely cowboy, foretelling what is next, and that has to be slow.
"Who By Fire" has been torched in spanish soils, there must be at least 3 different types of guitar in his intro.
I have a special soft spot for "Tonight Will Be Fine", whereas Leonard didn't surprise me with his recording, I indulge myself with his poetry first, I love the one presented here, happy, without burdens or other compromising expectations, it's just like that, "it will be fine".
In "Hey that's no Way to Say Goodbye", the musician delays the departure, he retains the memory of the moment, the presence of his lover. The introduction of the harmonica bespeaks that connection that we all know, el duende, the longing of the last goodbye.
Leonard Cohen said once that he "always felt that the nature of a song was a movement from lip to lip, that's the nature of the thing... and it moves around." And so it is with these cover versions, they move around and they have their own life, they live in the true spirit of the song and the great man that was, still is, Leonard Cohen. From lip to lip from heart to heart. Thanks GG for still working for our smile.
Last edited by Mary72 on Wed Jul 12, 2017 2:26 am, edited 1 time in total.
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