Metric Lips - Bela Fleck and New Grass Revival - percussion cover

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****Turn your Bass down on your speakers for this one. The bottom end of the marimba in the auditorium got boomy!*****

This piece was recorded March 2008 at Denton High School in Denton, TX, while I was the percussion instructor there.

This arrangement of mine was inspired by the great Row-Loff arrangement of this song by David Steinquest. That was written for a low A marimba, so I thought it would be neat to put the song back in its original key, using a 5 octave marimba. I also extended the song and added in all of the extra solos that were cut out of that version, and changed up a lot of the background "comping" parts to be closer to the original.

My kids convinced me to play guitar along with them (even in the All-State room the year before and the judge didn't say a thing because I look so young), which really added a touch of the original I thought, and then I had the idea to have the xylophone part actually play the mandolin chops instead of chords on the xylo.

Putting the piece in its original key did cause some muddiness issues on the low end of the marimba, but we still had a lot of fun with it, and it sounds a little grittier than the Row-Loff version I think, in the lower register. Nerves got the best of us in this run, with some really weird mistakes that never happened before, but all in all I'm still proud of this arrangement and performance.

Left to Right:

Joanna Ceja - (vibes/guitar part)
Sean Redman - (me on guitar)
Ryan Klinck - (bass marimba/bass part)
Bobby Jacobs - (xylo & mandolin)
Austin Ford - (marimba/banjo part)