Red Right Hand by Nick Cave, Mick Harvey, & Thomas Wydler
© Songs of Windswept Pacific obo Mute Song, Ltd.
(as performed by Vixy & Tony)
Vocal: Michelle Dockrey
Guitar: Tony Fabris
Take a little walk to the edge of town and go across the tracks
Where the viaduct looms like a bird of doom as it shifts and cracks
Where secrets lie in the border fires and the humming wires
And now you know you're never coming back
Past the square, past the bridge, past the mills, past the stacks
On a gathering storm comes a tall handsome man
In a dusty black coat with a red right hand
He'll wrap you in his arms, tell you that you've been a good boy
Rekindle all those dreams it took you a lifetime to destroy
He'll reach deep into the hole, heal your shrinking soul
But there won't be a single thing that you can do
He's a god, he's a man, he's a ghost, he's a guru
They're whispering his name though this disappearing land
But hidden in his coat is a red right hand
You don't have no money? He'll get you some
You don't have no car? He'll get you one
You don't have no self respect, you feel like an insect,
Well don't you worry baby 'cause here he comes
Through the ghettos and the barrio and the bowery and the slums
A shadow is cast wherever he stands
Stacks of green paper in his red right hand
You'll see him in your nightmares, you'll see him in your dreams
He'll appear out of nowhere but he ain't what he seems
You'll see him in your head, on the TV screen
Oh baby, I'm warning you to turn it off
He's a ghost, he's a god, he's a man, he's a guru
You're one microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan
Designed and directed by his red right hand
About the Song
Tony:
Red Right Hand is a Nick Cave song that Vixy loved. She found it on an X-Files
soundtrack compilation album called Songs in the Key of X, although
different versions of the song exist on Nick Cave's own albums, and in cover
versions by other artists. According to the song's Wikipedia entry,
the phrase comes from Milton's Paradise Lost, where it seems to refer to a wrathful God,
rather than a deceitful Devil as it does in this song.
As a cover tune, we have to purchase record company royalties in
order to be able to republish it. It's surprising how easy it is
to do that.
About the Songwriting
Tony:
When we decided to start covering this song in our live performances,
we knew there was no way we could imitate the lush production of Nick
Cave's original work. Since our favorite way of covering a song is to
change it and make it our own, we decided to go for the minimalist
approach, and make the arrangement as simple as possible. This brought
the focus to the lyrics, which are wonderfully creepy.
The song is essentially a twelve bar blues, leaving me free to come up
with anything I wanted on the guitar. The part I came up with is fun
because my right hand ends up doing a thumping rhythm as I play the
muted arpeggios that make up the verse sections. My hand doesn't turn
red or anything, though.
Vixy chose to sing the song's main hook line completely differently than
Nick Cave's original, turning his angry growl into her sultry torch-song
slide. Sometimes making music is all about going for your strengths.
About the Recording
Tony:
We knew from the beginning that the only way this song was going to
work on the album was if we kept the minimalist approach, duplicating
what we do when we perform it live.
To that end, I wanted to actually do it live, no overdubbing,
no processing, no editing, no reverb, no click track, just me and Vixy
in front of the microphones together at the same time. In the back
of my mind, I think I was trying to emulate an acoustic-only version
of Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus" that I'd been listening to for years.
After three unsatisfactory takes like that, Vixy wanted to strangle me.
But I talked her into a fourth take, and that's the one that ended up on
the album.
It's deliberately produced very dry and raw. Hopefully when you listen to
it on headphones, it sounds like Vixy is singing right into your ears.
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