Notes On My New CD Five Leaves Left, Track By Track – 5. “Day Is Done”

On Tuesday, March 29th, “Five Leaves Left: A Tribute To Nick Drake” by the Jason Parker Quartet was released. Each day thereafter I wrote at length about one of the tracks – how the arrangement came about, what went down in the studio, thoughts about the performances, etc. Click here to read them all.

“Day Is Done” is the second arrangement I did for this record, and we’ve been playing it for a while now. It’s a song that’s really fun to play, as it has very nice harmonic movement that lends itself well to blowing (soloing) over.

I immediately heard Evan Flory-Barnes starting off this tune on bass, and Michele Khazak singing the first verse over the descending bassline before the rest of the band joined in. The sound of the bass and Michele’s voice go so well together! Then when Josh Rawlings and D’Vonne Lewis come in it’s with great effect.

This was the first tune we recorded in the studio. I figured we were all pretty comfortable with it and it would be a good place to get our feet wet. The version you hear on the album was the third and final take. We all relaxed into it and played well, making this one of my favorite all-around performances on the album. I released this as the first single and have been happy to use it to introduce people to the new CD.

Some of my favorite moments: Evan and Michele playing together at the start and the end of the tune, Cynthia’s bluesy wailing, the way Michele sings the verse after the sax solo, completely making it her own, the poignant simplicity of Josh’s solo, and D’Vonne’s egging him on with the cymbal crashes as he comes to a climax…those kill me!

For comparison purposes, here’s the Nick Drake version of the tune:

Tomorrow we’ll talk about track 6, “Cello Song”.