Tag Archives: 16 Horsepower

Bob Dylan, Cover versions

The Best Dylan Covers: 16 Horsepower – Nobody ‘Cept You

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sixteen-horsepower

There’s a hymn I used to hear
In the churches all the time
Make me feel so good inside
So peaceful, so sublime
And there’s nothing to remind me of that
Old familiar chime
’Cept you, uh huh you

The Best Dylan Covers: 16 Horsepower – Nobody ‘cept You

Dylan left for New York in October, 1973 to compose new material for album sessions scheduled in November. Dylan already had three songs (“Forever Young,” “Nobody ‘Cept You,” and “Never Say Goodbye”) which he had demoed in June, and when he returned to Malibu after twenty days in New York, he had six more.

A session (Nov 2nd)  was devoted to all three songs demoed in June, and Dylan and The Band succeeded in recording complete takes of “Forever Young” and “Nobody ‘Cept You” as well as the master take for “Never Say Goodbye.”

When Dylan and The Band reconvened at Village Recorder the following Monday, November 5, with Levon Helm now present, they made another attempt at “Nobody ‘Cept You.”

The last song recorded on the 9th was a new composition titled “Wedding Song,” which Dylan had completed over the course of the sessions. “Nobody ‘Cept You” was originally planned as the album’s closing number, but without a satisfactory performance, it would be omitted and replaced by “Wedding Song.” (The November 2 recording of “Nobody ‘Cept You” was eventually released in 1991 on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991.) Both Wedding Song and Nobody ‘Cept You are wonderful songs and the one that surfaced on the Bootleg series is a very good take.

Secret South is 16 Horsepower’s third full-length studio album. Released in 2000, the album marked a distinct change in direction compared to previous efforts as it focuses more on storytelling over a more laid back soundscape. It had two cover songs, Wayfaring Stranger and Nobody ‘cept you.  The Dylan song is so immersed into the feel and concept of the album that you will think it was written for this record. Fantastic choice of song from David Eugene Edwards and 16 Horsepower.

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Country, folk, Great albums, Rock, Singer Songwriter

Today: 16 Horsepower released Sackcloth ‘n’ Ashes in 1996

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16h

“Well, at first the band were simply called Horsepower, but a lot of people thought that was something to do with heroin. That really pissed me off, so I decided to put something in front of it to distract them. “I got ’16’ from a traditional American folk song, where a man is singing about his dead wife and 16 black horses are pulling her casket up to the cemetery. I liked the image of 16 working horses.”
– David Eugene Edwards (NME, 1996)

16 Horsepower originated out of the “Denver scene” around 1992. Edwards teamed up with bassist Keven Soll and drummer Jean-Yves Tola (yeah he is French), and the trio soon discovered a common love for country music, traditional music (from all corners of the world), and the darker bands of the ’80s, like Joy Division, the Gun Club, and Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds.

They toured extensively the first years, sometimes as opening act for bands like Morphine, Los Lobos and the Violent Femmes.

Edwards said at the time that he regularly checked out Library of Congress records, old Appalachian music, and that he just listen to it for hours and hours. He expressed his for love Irish and Cajun music too, and how he saw it as all interconnected. All this seeped into Sackcloth ‘n’ Ashes.

When Edwards was writing about early America, he was referring to the darkest aspects of USA’s past: the slavery, the war with native americans and the rape of a fertile land. He’s also thinking of the moral decline and violence of the Wild West that found sinners having to answer to a form of justice much higher than that of Man’s. He writes about a young and more primitive country, he write about the punishments for wrong-doing that were much more severe and eagerly executed than today. The word of God was also the word of the state and the executioner. Edwards and the songs he wrote with Sixteen Horsepower existed in that world.

16 Horsepower – Haw (official video):

“The music of the church was the most important thing to me , that’s where I learned the doctrine, where it came to me. That was how I was spoken to.”
– Edward Eugene Edwards (grandson of a Nazarene minister)

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