The “Say, Oh-Hey” song sessions, from August of 2014, progressed nicely with new songs produced & posted every 7- 10 days. By October, with 11 songs already on the roster, we approached the 12th song considering: “Do we add a cover song thematically tied to the rest?…Particularly, if the song was a potential inspiration for the all proceeding songs?”
We all went with “Yes!” since one song would fill that bill: “Across The Universe” – by The Beatles. It's a song that was so ingrained our collective minds; we simply moved forward recording without listening to the original. The recording session done from our recollection was done with three acoustic guitars. And we did 8 takes to wrestle this song into a viable performance.
One cut and the opening guitar lick recorded with a 12-string Ovation & three were recorded with a 17” 1950 era Kamico Archtop…a favorite of ours for its' deep resonant voice. Those casual recordings were completed as iPhone Voice Memos. 
It was beneficial to go back & listen to the original haunting, prayer-like, words & music by John Lennon. We found on the original “Let It Be” record the tune was  somewhat disconnected from what we recalled the track to sound like. What’s this?: Lennon’s voice sounded overly processed, the backing vocals sounded canned and, overall, the production sounded less satisfying than remembered. The Phil Spector “produced” original just didn’t sound “right” to us in 2014. Then we grabbed the “Naked” CD version of the same “Let It Be” album, listened…& all was better. Lennon’s voice was true to form as recollected. The orchestration sounded less labored. Simple, elegant, masterful lyrics delivered honestly & inimitably in John’s unique, guru-like fashion. The power of this remarkable song was resurrected intact.
We had a demo record to complete. With this cover, we referenced the songs that came before on the “Say, Oh-Hey” album--while staying true to the intent of the original. There was John Lennon’s voice: probably one of the most iconic pop voices ever sculptured into vinyl over the last 60 years. THAT voice could never be duplicated, bested or re-imagined. Taking his “voice” off the table, we were left with a humbler voice, our orchestration & OUR phrasing. Perhaps the most off putting to the uninitiated is the odd meter in the original. 
No doubt, John Lennon was a songwriting rule breaker. There were odd bars of dropped beats; like John just got tired of strumming & decided to start the next verse after a pregnant pause…on-the-spot. There's a bar of 5/4 just before “Pools of sorrow, waves of joy”. “Possessing and caressing me” is also a bar of 2/4 and there's one bar of 4/4 (or, even a single bar of 6/4). He did the same odd signatures in the final verse (“Inciting and inviting me”). The 2nd verse is more conventional, but it has a extra beat before the chorus. We considered that irregular songs tended to come more from Lennon than McCartney, in part because John often wrote his lyrics first and fitted the music around them. For The Beatles it was all about creative expression and, to hell with convention in the book according to John.
Coincidentally, when we were done with this cover, the record ran about 9 seconds short (3:29) of the original “Naked” recording of “Across the Universe.” We were pleased with that given the random (let’s just sit down and do this) approach.
In that spirit, this cover recording references our other original compositions on “Say Oh-Hey” given the off-the-cuff approach we brought to this project. However, we’ve also cross-referenced the George Harrison styled Indian-inspired influences used by the Lennon-McCartney masters in their hay day. Hope you like our version…for all its foibles. 

Please note: The record was remixed in May 2016 and Mastered at eMaster.com during the same month.
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Across The Universe - ReMix - Michael Delgorio - eMastered

Everyone loves a good story. We've enjoyed telling them in words, pictures and music. 

Please follow MichaeldelAard here and on twitter @MichaeldelAard. We've long been moved by the rough cuts, bootlegs and demos by storied artists both past and present because they show pure emotion, high creativity unfettered by auto-tune and over-production. The elimination of anything that could remotely resemble anything but a perfect track is not part of this stream. This project is more about spontaneity. You'll find perfectly human imperfections and, spare (lean and mean)demo productions throughout. On occasion, though all tracks were recorded ultra-simply on an iPhone's voice memo app, we would pull a track into GarageBand to add a track or sound effects (as in several of the originals, herein)...but all in all these are low-fat productions that reflect our most basic love for music and storytelling. Nothing more than that. Should a track tickle your ear, we'd be most grateful to here about it. Thanks for the opportunity to share with you. Follows, comments and shares are welcome.