Free MP3 downloads of Neil Young Americana folk cover contest

Sport_Billy

Neil Young is running his own X-Factor/The Voice/Eurovision style worldwide online music contest at the moment as part of the launch of his new album of traditional folk covers called Americana (Neil Young and Crazy Horse).

It is an online Talenthouse contest with around 300 entries worldwide (mainly American, some UK), where other musicians have created their own covers of the folk songs Neil has covered on his new album, in various different styles.

And the great thing is some of these songs are quite nice (IMO), you can listen to these songs for free and even download MP3 files of the songs!

Here is the contest page

clicking on a song will bring up a www. page for the song where you can listen online, or if you edit the address and change www. to m. the mobile page will allow you to download the mp3 (right mouse click on the play icon and save as).

Here are some of the UK entries if you fancy checking out Team GB in this contest (and perhaps even voting, facebook vote or twitter vote button, the voting ends Monday afternoon):
Wayfarin' 'Stranger by The Big I Am (acoustic duo)
Clementine by Chris Beaver (rock band)
Gallows Pole (solo acoustic version) by Paul Strummer (acoustic solo)
(Gallows Pole has also been covered by Led Zeppelin! Jimmy Page and Robert Plant!)
Wayfaring Stranger by Grizzly Matadors (acoustic band)
This Land Is Your Land by Den Morville (acoustic solo)

Sport_Billy

And if you're more of a Team Europe supporter than a Team GB supporter, here are some nice entries from Italy to check out (and vote for), Italy seem to be doing the best out of the whole of Europe in this worldwide contest:

Wayfarin Stranger by Renzo Cozzani
Wayfarin Stranger by Pasquale Defina
This Land Is Your Land by The Dangerbyrds

Has anyone else got any favourites from this contest?

Sport_Billy

How will England do in today's competition? No I'm not talking about the football, I'm talking about this Neil Young contest in the original post, which the voting ends today at 6pm.

From what I can see it's a bit like Eurovision with a heavy American bias, but there are some entries from the UK if you fancy a listen for free, and fancy voting.

Enjoy!

Mandelbrot

I didn't come across anyone who'd done a version of God Save the Queen.
Apart from Professor Tweed's 'thing' - pleasant enough, but eh?

Must say, I found the site a bit of a struggle to manoeuvre around.
Was there any obvious way to look at versions of a particular song?

Sport_Billy

Mandelbrot wrote: »

Must say, I found the site a bit of a struggle to manoeuvre around. Was there any obvious way to look at versions of a particular song?

You're right, it's an awful browsing interface, not even showing the names of songs when your browsing the list, just name of artist and song artwork which might or might not have the song title in the artwork!

You can use google to help you find certain songs, e.g. search for:

talenthouse neil young god save the queen

it looks like there was one more cover of this song! ...

God Save The Queen by Will O'Loughlen

The list of songs that could have been entered, the songs on the new Neil Young album, are:

Oh Susannah
Clementine
Tom Dula
Gallows Pole
Get A Job
Travel On
High Flyin' Bird
Jesus' Chariot
This Land Is Your Land
Wayfarin' Stranger
God Save The Queen

The voting has closed now, and they'll announce the winners on 25 june.