Thursday, October 18, 2012

Don Wardlow: The King of Casio Country

 
Here's something unique: a serious, heartfelt tribute to funnyman "Weird Al" Yankovic, performed by one guy on an electronic keyboard + drum machine (a Yamaha, actually, not a Casio), recorded onto hissy tape.
 
Don Wardlow is a blind, middle-aged Southerner who has uploaded over 150 songs onto his YouTube channel, mostly covers of country-western oldies. It's all pretty charming, but his originals are special - as technically crude as any outsider music, but genuine and sincere, and surprisingly catchy at times. "American Idle," a commentary on jobs being sent overseas and his own resulting unemployment, sports an excellent earworm of a chorus: 


 
Dig the Latin drum machine groove on another sad-but-true tale from Wardlow's life, about his "Miami Girl," "A song about a girl I dated from 1991-95, with an emphasis on her habit of spending everything I had."
 
There's lots more that I haven't had a chance to check out yet. Come on, Don, lay some mp3s on us, daddy-o!
 

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