John Howard has posted his beautiful version of The Old Man In His Raincoat online. The track, written by Ian Button, is from John Howard’s E.P. ‘ Songs For Someone’ due for release on August 11th 2014.
Click here to listen or use the player.
John says “I met Ian at my SJQ gig in November 2013, when he played drums for me that evening. Afterwards Ian gave me a copy of his new album Papernut Cambridge – Cambridge Nutflake. It’s a great album, and the song which really stood out for me was this one, The Old Man In His Raincoat, which had a wonderful 1967/8 vibe about it. It sounded like the kind of song Syd Barrett’s Pink Floyd or Jeff Lynne’s Idle Race or Roy Wood’s Move or even Mark Wirtz might have recorded back then.
I wanted to try to get that feel on my version, giving it an arrangement which would be evocative of the whole ’67 psychedelic period, cellos, harpsichords, deep descending pianos with ’60 style vocals and backing vocals. But I was also careful not to lose the empathy of the lyric which is a very touching observational piece of writing.”
‘The Old Man In His Raincoat’ is released August 11th 2014, and available to download from iTunes, eMusic, Amazon and all other good download stores.