Christopher and Jeremiah Cover Van Halen's "Dreams" for Autism Speaks Fundraiser

1/17/2016

A few weeks ago, Christopher and Jeremiah entered into a recording studio to have some fun and play around with some Van Halen tunes in a possible project called "Jew Halen". They decided to switch off on singing duties, and Jeremiah sang on two songs (Dreams, and When it's Love) and Christopher sang on one (Right Now). In these three recorded and mixed tracks Christopher plays piano and guitar on each track and Jeremiah on bass and a drum machine on 2 tracks (When it's Love and Right Now). Today (January 17th 2016) we received the final produced versions of these tracks. We are proud of the quality of the recordings and musicianship of these three tracks and decided to do some good with these tracks. Over the duration of the next three weeks one of these songs will be released for download and can be obtained through a donation that will go to the organization "Autism Speaks". You can donate any amount, from one penny to a thousand dollars. 100% of the proceeds will go to Autism Speaks. You can choose to make the donation through the PayPal button below the video or by showing us a recent receipt from Autism Speaks through an email.

About the Recording: Jeremiah and myself being big fans of the Sammy Hagar era of Van Halen, were playing around with songs such as this one, as well as some of the lesser known songs such as Take Me Back (DeJaVu), Not Enough, and we even played around with a cover of It's The Right Time, which was an early version of the Gary Chorine led Van Halen's, That's Why I Love You. When I played acoustic gigs in my early 20s, if there was a house piano I would often play Dreams by Van Halen, or John Stamos' version of Forever or November Rain by Guns N' Roses. But with Dreams, it was one of the first songs I learned on the piano after Open Arms by Journey and For The First Time by Kenny Loggins. So, considering how well I knew the song and how long I had been able to play it, I felt comfortable after many years to kinda change up the piano part and give it a fuller sound and a different personality. Waiting for Jeremiah in the studio we rolled tape, and I played down this piano part of Dreams on the first take. Jeremiah enters in around the time I was 3/4 done, after finishing he told me the way it was played reminded him of Jouney's "When You Love a Woman". Given the fuller sound I could understand that, and I said, "maybe you can sing it like Steve Perry" jokingly, and with tape rolling he does just that. I said it like a goof, and he took it seriously and it became this amazing version of Dreams. When asked if we wanted to add other tracks to it, I was asked if I knew the guitar solo, and we tried it with a Gibson Epiphone and it didn't really work, so I tried it on a cheap, Washburn Oscar Schmidt acoustic, and the sound man screamed "that's it!" after the track was laid down.
Even though out of the three tracks we are releasing, this one is the least produced out of all of them, our producer for this project said there were minimal effects used in the final mix of this song, and no flashy vocal or instrumental adjustments. He said he added a slight echo, and normalization to the tracks and that was it. If this song was to ever be played live, this is exactly how it would sound. Despite all of this, I think this is my favorite track out of the three we recorded. I pray each of you enjoy this inspirational song, "So baby dry your eyes, save all the tears you cried, cause that's what dreams are made of"

Be very careful if you make a woman cry, because G-d counts her tears. (Bava Metzia 59a)

Record my misery; list my tears on your scroll -- are they not in your record? (Psalm 56:8)