‘Goodnight Irene’: A musical response to the storm

The Reverend John DeLore, a fantastic singer-songwriter who performed at the Juggling Gypsy a while back, was in his Brooklyn apartment settling in for the storm on Saturday with his girlfriend. As spins of the original Lead Belly version of “Goodnight Irene” played over and over on television DeLore, on advice from his girlfriend, wrote his own lyrics for the song to accommodate the current situation.

DeLore then recorded an acoustic track of him singing and playing and sent the mp3 out to about 30 musician friends. He invited them to play and sing along and then e-mail DeLore their tracks. By midnight DeLore says he had tracks from 17 other musicians, mostly from NYC and a few from Nashville and Los Angeles. All told, the song resulted in a 20-member band and choir.

You can hear or download DeLore’s version of “Goodnight Irene” here.

Or you can watch footage of NYC during the storm with the song playing: