Apr 20, 2015 Music by Benmont Tench
http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2015/...xclusive-song/
Watkins Family Hour Covers Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Steal Your Heart Away’ (Exclusive Song)
After 13 or so years of public rehearsals, the Watkins Family Hour is taking their show on the road this summer—and they’ve recorded an album to go with it. The group, featuring Sara and Sean Watkins, Fiona Apple, Benmont Tench, Don Heffington, Greg Leisz and Sebastian Steinberg, premiere their version of Fleetwood Mac’s song “Steal Your Heart Away” today on Speakeasy.
Perhaps best known as members of progressive bluegrass band Nickel Creek, the Watkins siblings started the Watkins Family Hour in 2002 as a monthly residency at Largo at the Coronet in Los Angeles where they and their musical friends would play cover versions of songs they loved. “Steal Your Heart Away” has been part of their repertoire for a long time, Sara Watkins says, after she first heard the tune on a mix CD her friend Davíd Garza gave her.
“The whole CD was a terrific collection of songs, but ‘Steal Your Heart Away’ sounded like a classic and perfect for the Family Hour,” she says. “We’ve played this song for years and years now. I remember when we first worked it up, it just seemed to play itself.”
The Watkins Family Hour doesn’t radically reinterpret the tune, which appeared on Fleetwood Mac’s 2003 album “Say You Will.” With Sara Watkins on lead vocals, the song is a little faster and punchier, with an arrangement that emphasizes her violin and deep chords from Tench on piano. (Tench plays with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, while Steinberg was part of Soul Coughing. Leisz on guitar and Heffington on drums have contributed to dozens of albums by artists including Emmylou Harris, Sheryl Crow and Lucinda Williams.)
The group’s self-titled debut also includes version of the Grateful Dead’s “Brokedown Palace,” Bob Dylan’s “Going Going Gone,” Gordon Lightfoot’s “Early Morning Rain” and Roger Miller’s “Not in Nottingham” from the soundtrack to Disney’s 1973 animated film “Robin Hood.”
“The Watkins Family Hour” is due July 24 on Family Hour Records/Thirty Tigers. They’ll kick off their first tour the same day at the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island and then make their way west and then south before closing the road trip Sept. 15 in Athens, Ga. See their full itinerary below. What do you think of “Steal Your Heart Away?” Leave your thoughts in the comments.