“Falling / yes, I am falling”: Country cover of a tumbling, descending Beatles song

Turnpike Troubadours have been closing some shows with an acoustic version of “I’ve Just Seen a Face,” a lovely Paul song whose description in “Revolution in the Head” is just so wonderful I wanted to share it here: “the simplest of descending-sequence guitar songs, made indelible by a melody based on” intervals of the A-major scale and paired with a “love-at-first-sight lyric … with its tumbling internal rhymes and gasping lack of breathing spaces.” Yup.

Turnpike (in this case Evan Felker soloing to start their encore) does it beautifully. The song’s been covered as bluegrass since the ’60s, maybe not a total shocker for a band the BBC said in 1962 was “not as rocky as most, more country and western.”

“Revolution” analyzes each Beatles song, so that the experience of reading it is essentially like replaying them all in your head but learning about them as you do so, and while on Amazon I learned my hardback version of it is going for $115 now. Muahaha! Not for sale.

More Beatles/C&W: Ringo even sang Buck. A shame that guitar groups were on their way out 🙂