In January, Phosphorescent announced “The Full Moon Project,” which he envisions as a way to release new music “separate from the modern album release cycle and all its requirements and pressures etc.” As the title suggests, he drops a new recording every time there’s a full moon. He started in January with a cover of Randy Newman’s “Bad News From Home,” then followed it up in February with a rendition of Nick Lowe’s “I’m A Mess.” Now he’s back with another cover, this time of the Bob Dylan classic “Like A Rolling Stone.”
Phosphorescent shared a note about how this recording came about, saying it started when he and a friend were playing music and realized they came up with something that sounded like the Dylan song. They decided to take a bit to learn the song and then record it. He continued, “It’s a live, one-take, first-take thing. To be fully honest we did try it a couple more times but none of em were better than this first raw take and I think it captures that spirit of freshly (re)discovering something powerful and moving in a song and that, in a nutshell, is what this project is all about.”
Listen to the cover above and find Phosphorescent’s full message about it below.
“Pleased to share this third offering from the Full Moon Project and so pleased to find it has already provided something like I hoped it might.
That is to say this month’s song came as a wholly unexpected surprise and wouldn’t have come about otherwise.
While there are many Dylan songs on ‘the list’ that I hope to get to, this one was certainly not one of em.
I mean who in their right mind would cover Like A Rolling Stone?
As it happened I had my longtime compadre, Scott Stapleton, over to the studio one night last week with the intention of overdubbing some keys on some other songs for the project.
I was settin him up with some microphones over at the Wurlitzer and he was riffing some improvised notes and it sorta sounded like ‘Like a Rolling Stone.’
We laughed and started singing it and then realized that neither of us really knew the chords.
A song like that, you just kinda assume you know em naturally.
Anyhow we played with it a little more and figured em out and then fired up the microphones and hit record.
7 minutes later we had this.It’s a live, one-take, first-take thing.
To be fully honest we did try it a couple more times but none of em were better than this first raw take and I think it captures that spirit of freshly (re)discovering something powerful and moving in a song and that, in a nutshell, is what this project is all about.
Or more simply:
How does it feel?
Xoxo
M.”
