Live Harvest
| Live Harvest | ||||
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| Live album by Blitzen Trapper | ||||
| Released | April 18, 2015 | |||
| Recorded | Doug Fir Lounge | |||
| Genre | Rock | |||
| Length | 36:00 | |||
| Label | Vagrant Records | |||
| Blitzen Trapper chronology | ||||
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On April 18, 2015, Blitzen Trapper released Live Harvest for Record Store Day. Recorded on October 17 at the Doug Fir Lounge in Portland, Oregon at the end of the band's VII tour,Live Harvest is a song-for-song interpretation of Neil Young's 1972 album Harvest. The album was released as a 180 gram vinyl LP with a download card. The band launched a short tour in support of the record, including stops at several City Winery locations in New York, Nashville, and Chicago, in which they played Harvest in its entirety, as well as Blitzen Trapper songs.
Blitzen Trapper's interest in Neil Young goes back before the band's inception: ""All of us have disparate tastes which comes out in our own stuff, but Neil Young is a common thread that’s run through all of our lives," bassist Michael Van Pelt stated, "I remember listening to Harvest on cassette in Eric’s mom’s car back in high school ... It’s a special record, and it gets pretty dark in spots, too. Darker than I remember." Lead singer Eric Earley elaborated, "I think we all knew the record before we even tried to play it. It’s one of those records that takes us to that place of comfort and nostalgia like The Dukes Of Hazzard or a Chevy Impala. It just feels good to play it."
Though the band had long been familiar with the original album, the conception for the cover album was spontaneous. Van Pelt said of Earley, "Eric just came in one day and said, ‘Let’s do Harvest at the Doug Fir,' ... We were all like, ‘Yeah!'" Unusually, Earley doesn't sing lead on every song on the album; keyboardist Marty Marquis - who has sung lead on the band's song "Jericho" - performs a stripped-down version of "A Man Needs a Maid," while drummer Brian Adrian Koch performs lead duties for the first time on a Blitzen Trapper record, on "The Needle and the Damage Done."
Website Stereogum teased the release with an exclusive premiere of the song, "Heart of Gold," eight days before the album's release. Stereogum called the track a "graceful rendition," stating that, "the band immaculately reconstructed [the song] from familiar components — the introductory wavering harmonica line, the chorus’ soaring slide guitar, and even the timid barn-door drumming ... It feels good to hear it."
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