Dale Crover – Harvest Moon/The Bit
In 1992, Neil Young needed someone to play his younger self in the “Harvest Moon” video, and the resemblance got Dale Crover the part. Decades later, Crover has covered the song, and it opens his new EP Get Yer Ba-Ba’s Out, out September 4th on Joyful Noise. The cover doesn’t stay put either: it barges straight into a rendition of Melvins’ “The Bit,” a song Crover co-wrote with Buzz Osborne, because the two songs share a guitar tuning and, as Crover put it, why not.
The story alone is worth knowing before you hit play. Crover wasn’t just made up to resemble young Neil, he doubled for him on stage, drove a car off the road in character, and at one point clipped the rear fender of Young’s actual 1955 Cadillac into a tree stump. “That stump saved me from rolling the car off the side of the hill, surely killing us both,” he says. It’s the kind of anecdote that makes a cover feel less like tribute and more like unfinished business.
The rest of the EP rounds out with acoustic versions of three songs from Crover’s Glossolalia, one from 2021’s Rat-A-Tat-Tat!, and a new title track. It’s the third solo acoustic record to come out of the Melvins camp, after Buzz Osborne’s two, and all three were recorded with longtime engineer Toshi Kasai. The roots trace back to Crover’s 2024 sets opening for Redd Kross, DJ sets that ended with a song called “Ba Ba” by Brazilian rapper Braulio Fogón, which along with the Rolling Stones’ Get Yer Ya Ya’s Out! and the literal meaning of glossolalia gave the EP its title. Forty-three years into his run as Melvins’ drummer, this is a different side of Crover, glam-damaged power pop filled out with slide guitar, Jew’s harp, and assorted bells rather than the kit he’s known for.
