Under The Covers

I don’t think I’ve mentioned here yet the news about oft-mentioned-here Danny Michel and his radio host gig.

The short version is that Danny is going to co-host a radio show with indie rocker and occasional bandmate Emm Gryner on CBC. That’s the two of them in the picture above. The show will focus on cover tracks. In addition to being a good idea for a show, this is quite apt since both Danny and Emm have (or at least have had) a large repertoire of cover material over the years, and both have released whole cover albums: Danny with his David Bowie album, and Emm with her album of covers of “guy” songs (yes, she did that before Tori Amos did, and with a lot less pretentiousness).

Here’s Danny explaining it in his own words in an interview:

7. It SEEMS like you’ve got a couple of back-up plans, B, C, and D! Let’s start with this CBC radio pilot you’ve been working on with Emm Gryner. Under the Covers. Tell me how that came about and what it is.

“DM: I just got the news they approved it today! The problem is when we have time to do it. My schedule is jammed for the next 3 months & so is Emm’s. Worst case, we record it later in the year & and it’ll air down the road. It’s called “Under the Covers” and is a show that explores the world of cover songs. The worst & the best. Every week we have a musical guest who might play a cover or confess how they feel about the cover someone did of their song. Luther Wright was on the pilot telling us about why he covered Pink Floyd & playing a song from it. The show is a lot of fun. We started with Aretha Franklin & ended at Devo. Between our Rock n’ Rolodex’s we’re aiming for some pretty serious names as guests.”

Emm’s take on the show is posted over on her blog under the amusing title “Emm and Danny Suddenly Have To Use Their Brains For The First Time in Over A Decade”. There’s also a little story on the show at ChartAttack.

This is suddenly more relevant, since I got this email from Danny earlier this week:

Just so you know, the CBC higher-ups would like to play the pilot of Under the Covers on May 21 (as part of the network’s special May long weekend programming). So be sure to tell everyone you know it’ll air across Canada on CBC Radio One on Monday, May 21 from noon – 1 pm.

(Note for Americans: Monday, May 21 is a holiday in Canada. See the note on last year’s post for details if you need them.)

So, consider yourself told.

If you aren’t in Canada, you can still listen to CBC over the tubes (probably at work, since I don’t think anyone else has the day off). With clever manipulation of time zones and CBC broadcast locations, you should be able to listen to the show in any of four or five consecutive slots, if you forget to be listening at noon. I’ll probably capture the show and make an MP3 later, too.

As a bonus, and an excuse to test out some technology, here’s three tunes that Danny used to have in his cover set that I still love a lot. I discussed two of them in a previous post on Danny covers, and the other in a previous post about a particular mix, so I don’t need to annotate them again.

As one more little bonus, you should pop over to this ChartAttack Photo of the Week, which shows Emm and Danny hanging out at a benefit concert a few years back. Danny is posing in what I can only call the Zdarsky pose.