Originally on the album Hot Smoke And Sassafras from 1994 by Australian indie rockers, Smudge, later made more famous through the Lemonheads rendition on the 1996 album, Car Button Cloth, Tenderfoot is an endearing indie rock tune, now getting a new, sharp version by Belgian/German duo, The Day.
"Tenderfoot is a song I listened to a lot when I was 11 years old after I heard my father play it in the car," recalls the band's own Gregor Sonnenberg who's one half of The Day alongside Laura Loeters. "I rediscovered it when I heard Evan Dando play it at Molotow in Hamburg in early 2019. I always liked its simple short form both musically and lyrically composed nearly like a list of someone taking stock, regaining after a previous letdown."
"Being a fan of the song, of course I also loved Dando’s wild careless performance of it, but recently I also got the feeling that the song has a certain soft melodic quality to it that has not been recorded yet," Gregor adds about his band's version of Tenderfoot. "That’s why I played it to Laura and luckily she really liked it, too. Later when it came to recording, everything fell into place very easily and we used all four first takes of Laura’s vocals at the same time. And I still am really happy hearing her interpretation as I feel it adds a new perspective to the song both the music and the lyrics."
Tenderfoot is the third cover by The Day in a short period of time, following their versions of songs by Dutch dreampop act, Dakota, and German electropop duo, Yeah But No. It comes with a just revealed video of beautiful, vintage visuals, created by the band themselves.
"For the video we tried to keep it as simple and DIY as possible with only the two of us in front and behind the camera shooting and doing the editing," they state. "We revisited some of the abandoned urban spaces you could see in other clips of ours before. We shot on a cheap camcorder this time, but flipped it upright like a mobile phone. Looking at the footage later, we really loved the results and you could probably call this a true “modern retro” way of shooting."
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Artist photo by Lumi Lausas
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