If You Could Read My Mind
The two singers who inspire me most are Johnny Cash and Scott Walker, and ever since hearing Cash’s version of Gordon Lightfoot’s If You Could Read My Mind on his posthumously-released “American V: A Hundred Highways” album, it’s been simmering away at the back of my mind. It’s a gorgeous song of regret.
I took Cash’s version as a starting point but also had in mind Scott Walker’s singing on recordings like The Walker Brothers’ “No Regrets”, on which he stays well down in his baritone register. It’s not a part of my voice that I use a lot - it’s not all that loud down there and when singing against a concertina it can be a bit hard to project over the top of the instrument.
As for the “arrangement”, I spent a bit of time sorting out a guitar part before deciding that something fairly static would probably suit it better than anything more fussy, so I opted for a simple chordal approach on my Wheatstone Maccann Duet concertina.
Download If You Could Read My Mind (approx 5MB)