Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers - The Van Sessions, Part 1 (2011-2012)

First off, I want to say that this post (and the next one) is 100% due to a post by Uncle Dan back at his alternate albums website "What-If." I'd never heard of Nicky Bluhm and the Gramblers until I saw an album of their stuff that he posted. He stated that he got hooked by watching their video of their cover of Hall and Oates' "I Can't Go for That (No Can Do)." So I went to YouTube and watched the video, and I got hooked too.

I recommend you check out that video too. It has over four million views, and with good reason, because it's lots of fun. Nicki Bluhm and the Gramblers were a band that unfortunately broke up in 2018. But while they were still around, they liked to record videos of themselves playing cover songs while driving down the highway in their van. Amazingly, Bluhm was both the lead singer and sometimes kazoo player while driving the van during the videos!

But it's not just a gimmick of playing songs while driving. They were a really good band, and Bluhm is a talented singer. There's something about her slightly rough voice and singing style that I think makes her special. Having to play in a moving vehicle forced them to play all acoustic, and I have particular love for acoustic music. Their cover of "I Can't Go for That" is a good place to start, because it's done so well. They seriously should have released that and had a big hit with it. But all their other songs are done really well too.

I started by downloading Uncle Dan's compilation album of their "Van Sessions" cover songs, which you can find here:

https://whatif-misc.blogspot.com/2018/09/nicki-bluhm-and-gramblers-van-sessions.html

That's good stuff. However, there was a problem: due to the fact the videos were recorded in a van driving down a highway, there was a lot of background noise on the songs. For instance, one could hear the sound of passing cars creating extra loud hiss from time to time. This was worse on some songs than on others. 

I first posted this album in 2019. At that time, there wasn't much that could be done about all that hiss. So there were many songs that I skipped over because I didn't think they sounded good enough. However, I reposted this album in 2026. By then, audio editing technology had improved drastically, thanks to AI-related technology. I was able to use the "denoise" function of the MVSEP program to pretty much wipe away the hiss entirely!

Thanks to that technology, I completely redid this album. I got rid of the hiss on all the songs I'd posted in 2019. Then I added in more songs that I had passed over due to the hiss problem. There are six new songs here. Four songs were also moved to Volume 2. Then some songs from Volume 2 were moved to a brand new Volume 3. So if you like this, I strongly suggest you get all three volumes.

This album is 53 minutes long.

UPDATE: On January 30, 2026, I heavily revised this album. The changes are discussed above. 

Here's a list of the original musical acts for each song: 

01 Tonight You Belong to Me - Patience & Prudence
02 Hey Baby - Bruce Channel
03 How Will I Know - Whitney Houston
04 Ramblin' Man - Allman Brothers Band
05 You're No Good - Dee Dee Warwick
06 Everyday - Buddy Holly
07 How Sweet It Is [To Be Loved by You] - Marvin Gaye
08 Material Girl - Madonna
09 Don't Worry, Be Happy - Bobby McFerrin
10 Deal - Grateful Dead
11 Pack Up Your Sorrows - Mimi & Richard Farina
12 Forever Your Girl - Paula Abdul
13 I'm Your Woman - Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers
14 Here Comes the Sun - Beatles
15 Can You Get to That - Funkadelic
16 She's Got You - Patsy Cline

And here's the usual song list:

01 Hey Baby (Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers)
02 Ramblin' Man (Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers)
03 You re No Good (Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers)
04 Everyday (Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers)
05 Material Girl (Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers)
06 Don t Worry, Be Happy (Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers)
07 Deal (Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers)
08 Forever Your Girl (Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers)
09 I'm Your Woman (Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers)
10 Here Comes the Sun (Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers)
11 Islands in the Stream (Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers)
12 I Can't Go for That [No Can Do] (Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers)
13 Easy (Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers)
14 Faith (Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/c9CmQcu6

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/WZ20fh6A6vGuCsH/file

For the cover art, I created a screenshot from the video of the band singing "I Can't Go for That" in their van. I upgraded it with the Krea AI program.