Elton John Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me - LIVE show by The Graystones and @EvanRileysings
This show marked the return of Izzy who is back in the band! And it marked our first public concert this year!
It was such a treat having Evan Riley and Izzy on the same stage together! They were amazing!
Behind the music:
What you're hearing is exactly what the crowd heard live with some tiny additions where we added some strings and a trumpet and a trombone harmony to the horn section.
You'll see that we recorded guitar and background vocals. These were recorded prior to the show and we added these to the sound during the show, so the live show audience heard those elements.
We do these songs for 2 main reasons:
1. to honor the artist (in this case Elton John and Bernie Taupin - and also George Michael for the live version that we did).
2. To learn and increase our skills as musicians to take into the future with us.
There are different schools of thought on adding sounds to a song. We wish that we had the budget to hire 4 background vocalists, a guest piano player and more horn players so that we could, in one single shot, create all the sound that is needed for this song. But we are a small band and don't have the financial resources to bring in more people in order to do a single performance and achieve the sound that a song like this needs.
So we opt to do the best with what we have and still honor the art and beauty of the song:
1. Evan Riley recorded all of the background vocals which is a massive part of the movement, growth and scale of this song. The amount of harmonies she had to record in order to create the full choir effect needed, was truly amazing.
2. Jake jumped in to play piano (since Harin left to focus more on school)... and Jake also recorded the guitar part separately
Additionally:
3. The horns needed a trumpet and also some small trombone harmonies, so Evan (not Evan Riley) had to record those
4. And we needed strings, so Philip (sax player) had to jump in to do those
Every once in a while, we see someone comment that the sound is "over produced". To clarify, there is hardly any processing done on the songs we put out (mainly just EQ, compression and reverb). This is because we don't have the money to purchase and we don't know the tools that professionally trained producers use to make amazing music. This is all mixed on a 13" laptop with no additional tools other than the standard stock things that come with Logic software. Unfortunately, you're stuck with our unpolished, low-fi sound. It's not perfect, but we're still proud.
Performers on this song:
Grayson - drums
Evan Riley - vocals (our favorite guest singer)
Izzy - vocals
Jake - piano and electric guitar
Grey - bass
Philip - sax, string arrangement, horn arrangement
Evan - trombone and trumpet
EXCITING NEWS: we have a PATRON section on our website www.thegraystones.com. For those who are interested and want to sign-up to support us, our PATRON (not Patreon) page on our own website is a great place. This is where you will see early releases and we will post behind-the-scenes and other exclusive content.
We would love it if you would subscribe to our channel, comment, like and share our videos with family and friends :)
And finally, we would love it if you could follow and subscribe to both Evan Riley and J8ke's social media channels. They're truly amazing artists and we're confident you will love following their social media links! Even though J8ke is an official member of the band, he also does so many amazing solo projects, and so we would like to ask that you support his social media channels and share them with family and friends still the same and honestly, we feel the world should be exposed to his (and Evan's) amazing talents. Please help us in supporting them.