See more Field Recordings at: npr.org/series/144918893/field-recordings
With the Sasquatch Music Festival booming overhead, the Brooklyn trio We Are Augustines dodges the wind — and the competing sound of Blind Pilot playing a set nearby — long enough to perform a stripped-down cover of Crooked Fingers’ “New Drink for the Old Drunk.”
The Brooklyn band We Are Augustines wouldn’t seem to lend itself to windblown acoustic sing-alongs: The songs on 2011’s Rise Ye Sunken Ships songs bellow and soar in the electric, anthemic spirit of, say, Titus Andronicus. But for this Field Recording, captured during the closest thing to a quiet moment at the 2012 Sasquatch Music Festival, the trio strapped on acoustic guitars — and grabbed a box for percussion — long enough to perform a cover of Crooked Fingers’ “New Drink for the Old Drunk.”
Which isn’t to say this is a quiet unplugged performance: Singer Billy McCarthy stays true to both the original song’s energy and his own vein-bulging vocal style. Subtract a stage, with its banks of amplifiers, and every ounce of We Are Augustines’ blissfully stormy energy survives intact.
Credits
Producers: Mito Habe-Evans, Saidah Blount; Videographers: Jim Beckmann, Mito Habe-Evans, Scott Holpainen; Audio Engineers: Matt Ogaz, Kevin Wait; Production Assistant: Nick Michael; Special Thanks to: Sasquatch! Music Festival, Live Nation; Executive Producers: Anya Grundmann, Keith Jenkins
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