A couple of months ago, I ran into Skylar Gudasz in downtown Durham and asked what she’d been working on. When she said she’d recorded a cover of “Wichita Lineman,” I shouted “what!” so loud that my voice echoed off the parking deck and I had to clap a hand over my mouth.
I’m not even a huge classic-country guy, but “Wichita Lineman,” written by Jimmy Webb and made famous by Glen Campbell, is one of those songs that stops any creature with a central nervous system in its tracks when the opening lines go sailing up through a gap in its string-laden arrangement.
Gudasz captures this effect beautifully in her version, which premiered at The Line of Best Fit on November 22. Today, she dropped the video (watch it below), telling WUNC that, because the legendary Wrecking Crew played on Campbell’s version, she put together her own North Carolina Wrecking Crew—Jeff Crawford, Kaitlin Grady, Peter Lewis, Emma Nadeau, Libby Rodenbough, and Casey Toll—and spent two days recording it at Arbor Ridge Studios.
We still have to wait until spring for Gudasz’s new album on Suah Sounds, but this will go a long way toward holding us over until then.
