The unique storyteller/narrator Les Claypool keeps himself busy with frontman/bassist duties in Primus and several other projects. The latest one, Duo de Twang, sees him pairing up with old friend and guitarist Bryan Kehoe, who amongst other common projects, was the main actor in Les’ jamband mockumentary Electric Apricot: Quest for Festeroo. The two have been ‘twanging’ some tracks and the result is the debut album Four Foot Shack, set to be released on February 4th via ATO Records.
Les explains how the twang duo came about:

“The Twang project is me exploring a lot of stuff that I personally listen to; Johnny Horton, Vernon Dalhart, Jerry Reed, Bob Wills, Eddy Cochran stuff like that – it’s another door for me to open. I’m doing this sort of Luther Perkins, Johnny Cash guitar-ish type part on my bass, by doing the old ding-dinka-ding, dinka-ding-dinka-ding on a lot of the stuff. It took me a little bit to get that. Now that I’ve gotten it, I can pull songs out of the air and it’s surprising how many songs easily succumb to the twang, and can be complimented by the twang. When all is said and done, it’s just a hell of a fun project for me right now. I’ll do it ’til it’s not fun anymore.”

Other than tracks from Primus and Les solo material, Four Foot Shack features covers from the Bee Gees, Alice In Chains, Jerry Reed, Stompin’ Tom Connors, Johnny Horton and The Chantays. “A lot of it is just stumbling across it,” said Les explaining how he picked which tracks to be twang-ified. “You’re twanging away, and then all of a sudden, something just comes out. And then you laugh about it…or you don’t. And then you move on. There are tons of songs that we’ve stumbled across, and these ones just happened to be the ones that stuck.”

Duo De Twang’s first single, a cover of Primus’s ‘Jerry Was a Race Car Driver’, serves as one hell of an awesome taste of what’s to come in February. Listen to it. A lot of times.