If YouTube is a major contributor to your music consumption habits, you’ve probably run across The Brothers Comatose by now. As an antidote to cabin-fever during the days of Covid lock-down, the band started monthly sessions of getting together to jam. They captured some of the better results on video and started posting. They did covers of classic rock songs, covers of friend’s songs, even covers of their own songs. The sessions gained a life of their own, continued after things opened up, and started to include local and passing-through-town contributors. Pretty soon the catalog stretched to untold dozens of songs. The band decided to release an album of fifteen of the best ones, called Ear Snacks.
The CD opens with Ain’t No Grave, a Claude Ely gospel number where the band and guest Charlie Parr apply a bluegrass spin. Also in the gospel realm is the Gillian Welch/Dave Rawlings-penned I Want To Sing That Rock and Roll, with the irony in the title on full display. Fellow San Franciscan Lech Wierzynski drops by to do Bedside Window, a California Honeydrops tune without California Honeydrops horns. Tom Quell helps out with Brenton Wood’s Oogum Boogum in all its doo-wop glory, while Sean Hayes takes the lead in Springsteen’s Atlantic City.
The most transformed song on the record is Tom Petty’s It’ll All Work Out. It features erhu virtuoso Jiebing Chen in a mind-blowing east-meets-west performance. (You’ll instantly recognize the sound of the erhu even if you don’t know what one looks like.) The song also underscores one of the takeaways for me: it’s not about what song you choose to play, it’s about the joy you have doing it. On that joy scale, Ear Snacks is off the chart.
About the author: I've actually driven from Tehatchapee to Tonopah. And I've seen Dallas from a DC-9 at night.