These guys never stop.
Right after coming off an extensive West Coast tour, the release of Live From The Devil’s Backbone, and now we have two new tracks from the honky tonk legends, Mike and the Moonpies.
Two songs are housed on their project Redbird, the title track, and a cover of The Wallflower’s “Three Marlenas.”
“You may remember at the beginning of the year, Cat and Zach and I sat down for an acoustic session with Garden & Gun, and one of the tunes we performed was a new one called ‘Redbird.’
Growing up, I remember my dad playing Arlo Guthrie’s ‘Alice’s Restaurant Massacree’ – but he only ever played it on Thanksgiving every year. I loved the conversational storytelling of that song. It still makes me think of Thanksgiving at home every time I hear it.
When I wrote ‘Redbird,’ I wanted to create a song that was steeped in that 20th-century Americana storytelling. With the centerpiece of a football game bringing two opposing forces together, paired with a heavy dose of dobro, we bring you our new tune, ‘Redbird.’ It only seemed fitting to release it on Thanksgiving.”
The quick tempo draws listeners in from the first picks of the guitar, and the heavy steel riffs carried throughout pose a modern-day, wild-western tale of a football game turned robbery. The witty lyrics will have you smiling and bobbing your head along from the start.
The frontman for the band, Mike Harmeier, described it as:
“A robbery that turns into a friendship.”
When they debuted the track on the ‘Back Porch Sessions’ earlier this year.
The second track is a cover of the 1996 hit from The Wallflowers, “Three Marlenas.”
“We’ve been wanting to cut the song ‘Three Marlenas’ by The Wallflowers for a long time, as we’re all big fans of The Wallflowers and their 1996 album ‘Bringing Down the Horse.’
While we were in the studio working on new music, it seemed like the right time to finally get it done and pair it with ‘Redbird.'”
They pose the song in a whole new light, reworking the soft alternative punk track into a honky tonk track that you’d love to hear in a dive bar. With the focal point of their version being a steel guitar paired with an acoustic, the melodies give the track a light and airy feeling as they keep the integrity of the original lyrics.
In the chorus, they bring in some stellar harmonies and backup vocals that give the track the live band feel that The Moonpies portrays throughout their catalog.
It’s always a good Friday when we get new music from Mike and the Moonpies, and these two tracks hit.
If you haven’t heard the original track of “Three Marlenas,” do so while you’re here.
