Courtney Barnett Covers "Houses", Elyse Weinberg's 1968 Song with Neil Young

Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile
Anthem, Washington, DC - November 7, 2017
Photo by thrashette

Courtney Barnett recorded a cover of "Houses", Elyse Weinberg's 1968 song with Neil Young.

The clip starts with “Charity” from Courtney Barnett's latest album Tell Me How You Really Feel. Elyse Weinberg's 1968 song "Houses" is a pretty obscure amongst Neil Young fans as we discussed when digital uploads started surfacing a few years back. (More below.)

Me n my band recorded a cover of 'Houses' (by Elyse Weinberg) a couple of months ago at Spotify Studios in NYC n now it’s available alongside a version of 'Charity' on @Spotify here. https://t.co/R8PveplBrW pic.twitter.com/0wowtZdALZ

— courtney barnett (@courtneymelba) August 15, 2018

In a statement, Courtney Barnett said:

Recently I found myself on tour with a night off.

My friend Janet invited me to her house for a home-cooked meal where we ate beautiful food, shared stories, and played with Mac the old dog. Late in the evening Janet pulled out a record titled ‘Elyse’. The artwork reminded me of Joni Mitchell’s Ladies Of the Canyon. I fell in love with this mysterious artist and in particular the song ‘Houses’.

Rumour has it Neil Young is playing the lead guitar line. I flipped the record over but couldn’t find his name in the credits. Elyse Weinberg once said of her life in music “the plan is to remember who i really am”.

I liked that.

So here's "Houses" by Elyse Weinberg and what we know.



From Elyseweinberg.com:

Back in the 1968, the California native released her self-titled debut to much success. The album hit #31 on the Billboard album chart and she appeared on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show, in Newsweek and the L.A. Free Press, and at Shaffer Music Festival in NYC. Even Cher choose to use one of her song’s “Band of Thieves” or the soundtrack to her acting debut, the 1969 film Chastity.

However, a string of bad luck — and the fact that Cher for some reason instead credited the song to Sonny instead — led Elyse to experience only minor success in the years that followed before she drifted into seclusion and changed her name to Cori Bishop.

But then, some 30 years after the release of Elyse’s debut, Andrew Rieger of Elf Power got hold of a copy. The rest was history,

The Holy Grail.

That's how Andrew Rieger of Elf Power described the moment in 1999 when he first listened to Elyse's long forgotten 1968 self-titled release. Back in the late '60's, the album received quite a bit of attention - so much so that Elyse appeared on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show, in Newsweek and the L.A. Free Press, and at Shaffer Music Festival in NYC. She continued to write and record for Asylum Records. Cut to 30 years later when Rieger fell so much in love with her debut album that he contacted Elyse (now going by the name Cori Bishop and living in Ashland, Ore.).

The rest is history - Orange Twin rereleased the self-titled debut, along with two other of her songs from that era, one of which, "Houses," features Neil Young wielding his distinctively ripping guitar sound. Since, Elyse's story has become something of a rock legend - after the rerelease her album received massive amount of positive feedback in the press, and she was mentioned in Magnet, Time Out NY, Aquarium Drunkard, Creative Loafing (amongst others). Perhaps the most flattering result was two extremely successful indie bands, Vetiver and Dinosaur Jr. decided to cover "Houses" in the aftermath of the release.

In My Own Sweet Time

Now, after playing extensively over the past few years, which included a date at Montreal Pop Festival in 2008, Elyse has recorded a new album for the first time since the late '60's - the aptly titled "In My Own Sweet Time." Elyse's voice is still captivating - at once sweet and melodic, while also sounding edgy and ragged, brimming with a sense of hope and liberation. As Andrew Rieger said, it's scary and magical stuff, which is particularly captured in the album's first single "Anybody Out There?"

From Rusted-moon.com (in German, use translator on the sidebar):

This song is from Elyse Weinberg's unreleased second album titled "Greasepaint Smile" and was produced by David Briggs for "Tetragrammaton Records". That label was owned by Bill Cosby and went bankrupt just before the relase, The track with Neil was later included as a bonus on the cd re-release of her first album. "Greasepaint Smile" was re-released on vinyl 2 years ago..

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