Howdy folks! The Disco Palace is goin’ country this time with my latest music video! The video is a country/rock cover of the rocking track “Last Nite” by the Strokes. It’s got lots of twang, featuring ukulele, mandolin, and violin! This is my Internet debut playing all these instruments. Please click here or on the image below to view the video.

The Strokes rose to fame in the early 2000’s with a raw rock sound, a throwback garage band image, and lots of rocker personality. They were the talk of the town, and often considered the “next big thing” in rock music. The Strokes didn’t do it for me, however. Even after seeing them at Lollapalooza, I didn’t care for their music too much. Too much rock, haha.

My opinion of The Strokes has changed though.  A couple weeks ago, I performed “Last Nite” live – twice – with my Aughts Ensemble at the Old Town School of Music.  I gotta admit, it was a really fun song to play.  For the 2nd performance, I was asked to sing lead, because the original singer couldn’t make it to the show.  And wow, “Last Nite” was even more fun to play live, as the singer!  So I decided last week that I should do my own cover of the song.

 

I wanted to do a version of the song that was unique.  Once you play it live, you don’t want to reproduce the same thing on video, ya know?  So I thought – hmm, this could be a good country song!  The guitar solo in the song is very twangy and blues-ish; I could expand upon that theme.  Those of you who know me should know how much I hate country and blues.  Nonetheless, I decided to head straight into the world of country to do my cover.  I busted out my mandolin and ukulele – instruments I paid no more than $40 for – and dusted off the old violin I had since middle school – and away I went!  While the mandolin and ukulele parts were pretty easy, I did find the violin part rather difficult.  I expanded the violin solo and made it go higher – and realized my violin skills were really rusty!  But I really felt that having the violin play the lead instrumental role throughout the song would help “country-fy” the song.

Enjoy!