I need to herein temporarily interrupt the incessant hype of my own new album, "Hues of Blue," to let you know about a single by another artist that I had a hand in writing that just dropped. Will it steal some of my thunder? I hope so! It deservedly should.
I'm the type of songwriter that if you only hear my own versions of my own songs, you might not really be able to tell if they're good songs or not. When you hear a great singer and band record a version of one of my songs with great production, it's only then that you can tell the song is pretty good.
A couple years back, solo artist Ultimate Rick Jones (URJ) did just that. He recorded and released a cover of my song "Used To Be Good Looking" that was a fine example of this. I blogged about it excruciatingly here: https://blog.scottcooley.com/2024/07/ultimate-rick-jones-used-to-be-good.html. I just noticed the auto-URL thing for that post reads ultimate rick jones used to be good. He's still good, I assure you. Better than ever.
He's a songwriter, a producer, a vocalist, a multi-instrumentalist, and a serial collaborator with a great rotating cast of musicians who consistently churn out high-quality, highly entertaining music. There are probably other artists named Rick Jones, but there's a reason this one is known as "Ultimate" Rick Jones.
Now he's done something similar with a song he and I wrote together. My friend Ultimate Rick and his crazy-good international band just released a crazy-good song called "Bon Voyage" that I co-wrote with Rick. It features the crazy-good lead vocal (and guitar) of rising star John Serrano, who hails from the cultural powerhouse Andalusian region of southern Spain.
Just as he turned my old blues song UTBGL into a thing of beauty, URJ has now done the same with a song draft I was sort of stuck with. I brought a somewhat wholesome song to him and he took it in a devious direction. It was just what the song needed. Then he and his band worked up a sweet set of tracks for it, and the icing on this cake was getting John to do the lead vocal. Along the way, magic happened.
Being the ultimate professional that he is, he also whipped up some impressive marketing collateral, such as this cool alternate single cover art:
I'm proud to say this is my first successful co-write! Rick deserves most of the credit on this one, but he graciously gave me credit in the liner notes. You can listen to it, download it, own it, and read all about it here:
Bon Voyage is out now on Bandcamp: https://ultimaterickjones.bandcamp.com/album/bon-voyage-featuring-john-serrano
And also out now on Subvert: https://www.subvert.fm/ultimate-rick-jones/tracks/bon-voyage
