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 some months 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 2016. 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. But there were two things I wanted to change. The first is the loud hiss that can be heard on many of the songs. This is no fault of Uncle Dan's; it's due to how the videos were recorded in a van driving down the highway. For instance, one can hear the sound of passing cars creating extra loud hiss from time to time. But it was too much hiss for me.

So I experimented with using noise reduction in the musical editing program Audacity. Normally, I'm loathe to use noise reduction, because it's like a carpet bombing instead of a surgical strike, messing with the overall sound of the song. But if there ever was a valid time to use noise reduction, this is it. Hissing that was so loud it pretty much made songs unlistenable could be drastically reduced with only a minor cost to the rest of the sound of the song. There were some songs of theirs where I tried noise reduction, but it wasn't effective unless I did it at such a high level that it ruined the whole song. So I've left those songs out. Luckily, there were only a handful of those.

The second thing I wanted to change was the song list. There were some songs on Uncle Dan's album that I didn't like that much. But I checked out the band's YouTube videos, and I found other songs they did. I wound up with enough music for two albums about 50 minutes long each. Here's the first one. The second one will follow directly after this one.

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://www.upload.ee/files/15276028/NckiBluhm_2011-2012_VanSssionsPart1_atse.zip.html

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