Haunting and horny was the energy Keli Holiday was trying to grasp with his cover of Bruce Springsteen‘s ‘I’m On Fire’, and where better to do that than in hotel rooms across regional Australia?
For his solo debut in the Like A Version studio, the dulcet-toned singer stepped to The Boss himself, a feat he knew would not be an easy one.
“He’s a really, really fucking good songwriter,” Keli Holiday said.
“For some reason, my conception (sic) was never that he was this dope songwriter. It was always like ‘he’s the rock’n’roll dude that’s ‘Born in the USA!’.
“But you go through his catalogue and its like oh, the dude’s unfuckwithable. His pen game’s nuts. He knows how to put a song together and deliver it right.”
With minimal time to get the band together – which included Baker Boy on yidaki, strings, a full band and backing vocals including Abbie Chatfield‘s sister Jodie – Keli Holiday found himself in hotel rooms on tour trying to make all the pieces fit.
“I was sitting in hotel rooms all throughout regional Australia,” he said.
“Trying figure out how to crack the code of how to deliver Bruce Springsteen’s song without butchering it to its utmost potential.”
All he had left to do was plug in and let it rip.
