HALLEY ELWELL MUSIC

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Sisters on the J Train video is here!

It’s May 2020. Those of us who have been sheltering at home and (thankfully) able to stay physically healthy are deteriorating a bit mentally and looking for ways to expand and better our circumstances.

Thus, my friend Leda and I decide we will try to recreate Kate Bush’s song, “Wuthering Heights”, an ode to the book of the same name by Emily Bronte. The video for this song is simply Kate Bush dancing. It’s bizarre and perfect. I agree to play piano and sing, and my friend Leda will dance.

I get as far as finding the sheet music for the song. I try a few runthroughs. A sinking feeling starts to creep in. This song is hard. I keep meaning to practice it more and get to it. I even sit down and record something. But the best I can come up with is me “skrelting” (skreeching/belting).

Leda has better luck and records not one, but two versions of the song and sends them my way almost immediately. They begin to gather digital dust as I slowly let my side of the project slip into a long queue of other “to dos,” until it’s been a year.

And a year later, I am putting out an EP that has been a dream of mine for a long, long time. I have no idea how the idea came to mind to try to mashup Leda’s dancing with my song, Sisters on the J Train, but I learned to greatly appreciate a strong 8 count in dance.

In the same way you can do the macarena to almost any song, I was able to pretty seamlessly put Leda’s dancing to my track.

Here is the video for Sisters on the J Train so you can see for yourself. Enjoy!