I don’t believe in magic or fate or astrology or pretty much anything along those lines (except jinxes), but I do love the wonderful coincidences and synchronicities that projects like this often serve up. Another bit of magic that my hat manifested as I drew names out of it to decide who would cover whom was to assign Moe Provencher the task of covering Julia Massey. In addition to being an accomplished songwriter, musician, and audio engineer (she’s mastered the majority of volumes of Ball of Wax over the past few years), Moe is also a podcast host and producer. Her podcast Grief/Relief, now in its second year, has the Julia Massey song “A Bit of a Hard Time” as its theme. See? Magic! Naturally, I wasn’t too surprised to see that this was the song Moe had chosen to cover, but I was very pleased to see she’d chosen to make it a collaboration with local treasure Carrie Biell. (Carrie may not know or remember this, but she was one of the first people in Seattle I played music with, many years ago.)
Julia Massey and the Five Finger Discount’s original is a driving, joyful rock tune, with Julia’s bright voice and bubbling keyboards offsetting the titular “hard time,” so you focus on the “bit.” We’ll be fine, it leaves you thinking, despite the hard time.
Moe and Carrie leave the lyrics untouched, but they bring it all way down – the tempo, the vocal range and timbre, even the positivity. You feel the hard time a bit more with this one, as if the singers are singing to comfort themselves in the middle of it, rather than rallying a friend. But it’s not a sad, dreary bumout-fest, either. Moe has beautifully arranged and produced a lush, subtle musical landscape featuring hushed harmony vocals, melodic guitar, and keyboards that bubble in their own understated way. We are fortunate to have these two recordings in our lives: Depending on where you stand in relation to your own hard time at any given moment, you will want both Julia’s original and Moe and Carrie’s version in your playlist arsenal at all times.