The scenes in this video are all from Artificial Intelligence generation that I made by tagging lyrics for this song in the prompt when you ask the program to "imagine" those words.
This is one of my favorite George Harrison songs, from All Things Must Pass. I had in my head a little different take with the vocals more up front than the original, and again, Keaggy and I both being Beatles lovers, I thought this would be a good choice to cover.
I also wanted to leave some good advice lying around for some loved ones, because oddly-worded as it is to some, this song is full of deep meaning and wonderful advice about not getting caught up in the bullshit of the world. Lots of the things to watch out for.
I loved Leon Russell's version, but no way I could pull something like that off, so sticking fairly close to the original script with a key change, I set about getting Jeff and Joe to record together for me again. They not only did that on this song and Lay It All Down, but a couple of the Merl Saunders songs I covered on 3200 W 22nd Court, released the end of 2021. I knew they'd nail this. They sent the parts back, I added some guitar, gave it over to Phil who just made it magical. I sent it to Phil Madeira for organ work, and he gave me back the perfectly understated parts you hear.
Then it was vocal time. First, this is a helluva hard song to sing, but I think (hope) I got through it OK. I wanted to do some fun things with the backing vocals, and first up brought Lindsey Elam into the project. I met her when she performed with our annual Garcia birthday lineup at The Basement East in East Nashville, hosted by Future Birds and Los Colognes. She has a lovely folksy Kentucky girl voice and gave me just what I wanted to ground the parts.
I then sent it over to Gillian Desmarais, who added another layer of background vocals, and finally at the very end, I wanted several people to sing the last line "Beware of Darkness." It was probably the shorted recording session David Gans and Dianne Davidson every did for about three seconds each, but layered with my voice, Lindsey, Gillian, and them together, I got what I wanted there, too. I ended the song with improvised electric sitar.