Eclectic Kalamazoo Artists Band Together for Covers Album

Feed your appetite to support local music and feed the homeless in Kalamazoo. 'Cover Your Bases' is a benefit compilation album of cover songs by local artists.

Kalamazoo has always had a thriving local music scene. Here's your chance to check out ten area artists, hear some choice tunes, and feel good about helping feed the homeless. Fake Baseball Presents, a page "dedicated to collaboration and proliferating art for the community good," presents the compilation album Cover Your Bases. 

Available now, this project features ten Kalamazoo-area bands' interpretations of songs by The Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, George Michael, Stevie Wonder, Cher, and others. Some you will know, some will be new. Here are a couple of highlights:

Time of the Season

• Fake Baseball's version of the Zombies' classic "Time of the Season" leads the compilation with a female vocal that swings. The arrangement is funky and energetic. A honking saxophone leads the horn section into the bridge, layered with layered keyboards seemingly clashing, but it works. The Zombies were more psychedelic on some of their other work, and so is this track.

Soak Up the Sun

• "Soak Up the Sun" gets the 8-bit treatment from Katy Needs a Life. This is what Sheryl Crow would sound like inside an '80s video game.

Blackbird

• I'm not sure I can tell you exactly why, but I like what Jordan Hamilton has done with "Blackbird," even though it is, at times, unrecognizable.

Fake Baseball Presents supports the efforts of local charity Food Not Bombs. From their Facebook community: "Food Not Bombs Kalamazoo is committed to providing hot, healthy, tasty food to unhoused individuals in our community. We also deliver requested supplies such as hand sanitizer, masks, toilet paper, etc."

Recorded locally at La Luna Recording and Sound, housed in a former WWII foundry in Kalamazoo's Edison Neighborhood, the digital album Cover Your Bases sounds great. Your $10 donation to the project gets you unlimited streaming of the record via the free Bandcamp app, plus a high-quality download in MP3 and FLAC. Check it out here.

Get our free mobile app