Back in February, folk artist William Tyler put his personal spin on a selection of songs during his second appearance on the Aquarium Drunkard’s Lagniappe Sessions. The session is now available on digital platforms and features covers from the likes of Yo La Tengo, Fleetwood Mac, in addition to work from composers like Antonín Dvořák and George Frideric Handel.
The complete list of covers includes sparse instrumental versions of the Mac’s classic “Go Your Own Way,” Dvořák’s “New World Symphony,” Handel’s “Sarabande,” and Yo La Tengo’s “Tears Are in Your Eyes.”
Tyler explained some of the more unconventional choices on his Lagniappe Session page.
“Dvořák wrote this symphony while he was an expat living in the States at the close of the 19th century,” Tyler said. “He was tremendously influenced by American folk idioms and gospel music, and this theme has passed into our collective unconscious so effortlessly that it’s hard for people to remember that it was written by a Czech composer and not, in fact, a homegrown folk tune.”
As for Handel, Tyler explained, “Bach is of course the big daddy of Baroque, but Handel is the calm, steady middle brother. This is a powerful, deceptively simple theme that gained a lot of more recent fame as the ‘theme song’ to Kubrick’s film Barry Lyndon.” He added: “There is something so grand and somber about this melody that it’s hard to imagine it as anything other than a funeral processional, but I guess this was Handel’s version of a ‘slow jam.'”
