Doveman cuts loose on soundtrack

Thomas Bartlett has never seen "Footloose." Considering that the Vermont-bred musician is only 26 years old and the film came out in 1984, this doesn't seem like a surprise. But since the leader of the self-described "lamp rock" act Doveman has been creating an Internet buzz of late with a song-for-song remake of the film's soundtrack, it does seem odd that he has yet to fully experience the endearingly cheesy Kevin Bacon dance flick.

"I am planning on it, but now it almost has to be like an event when I see it," he says.

Bartlett recorded the Doveman version of "Footloose" at the behest of his childhood friend Gabe Greenberg, whose late sister had been a big fan. Greenberg was pleased with the results, even if they weren't exactly what he was expecting.

"The way I specifically tackled some of the songs really shocked him, I think," Bartlett says from the Portland, Ore., stop on his current tour with Sam Amidon and Nico Muhly.

Indeed, the cheerful pop/soul/rock of the original versions is stripped away and replaced with ultra slo-mo takes that feature Bartlett's hushed vocals and layers of fragile piano lines, wistful accordion, squealing guitars, and droning organ noise. The Ann Wilson-Mike Reno power ballad "Almost Paradise" becomes a smoky noir soundscape. "Dancing in the Sheets" evokes not original pop funkateers Shalamar, but indie rock low-talkers Luna. And Kenny Loggins is going to have to listen a few times to the title track to find any evidence of his musical DNA.

"As Gabe described it to me, the original soundtrack - which he really deeply loves - is, for him, this self-obsessed, self-aggrandizing teenage epic love thing," says Bartlett. "He felt like I was actually doing something similar in Doveman songs but in this bizarrely inward-turned way."

This new rendition might shock fans of the original release - as it did the film studio's lawyers, who ordered him to cease and desist. But it's a good introduction to Doveman's equally adventurous and knotty second album, 2007's "With My Left Hand I Raise the Dead."

"I feel like it's probably a good entryway for people into my music just because I know [it's] a pretty challenging album," says Bartlett, who began playing the ukulele at 4 and the piano at 6. "It doesn't yield up its secrets on first listen. What's been interesting is the best reactions I've gotten to that record have been recently. People who've had it for six months, they listened to it once and, eh, not quite for them, and they listen to it again and get more and more into it."

Bartlett's whispery croon and the moody, drifting, sometimes menacing sonic beds - half the album is instrumental - make it a natural for late-night headphones listening. Or, as Bartlett puts it with a laugh, "it's exactly what you need between the hours of 1 and 4 in the morning, alone, unable to sleep, with a drink."

To help keep himself in ramen noodles, the singer-songwriter has offered his keyboard skills to artists like David Byrne, Antony and the Johnsons, Martha Wainwright, and Bebel Gilberto, among many others.

"He's a pleasant and unique fellow," Bryan Devendorf, drummer for the band the National, says of his buddy, who has worked as a touring keyboardist for the buzzed-about indie rockers. Its members will contribute to the next Doveman record. "He's very adaptable," says Devendorf. "He can play a lot of different ways and he has his own way of playing, too, which we like."

Bartlett also has his own way of expressing himself vocally and says that his lean-in-close style is mainly the product of a longtime fear of singing. "Eventually what made me do it is that I really, really wanted to write songs and I didn't feel like writing songs for other people," he says.

Bartlett is unsure where his phobia stems from and says he's not entirely cured. He doesn't even sing in the shower or along with the car radio. He is, however, comfortable "in very specific settings. If there is a microphone in front of me, I will sing. If someone asks me how does that song go again, I won't sing it, even if it's my own song."

The ultimate beneficiaries of his phobia, says Bartlett, are Doveman audiences: "When I do sing, I always mean it fully."

But when he does eventually throw his "Footloose" viewing party, his guests shouldn't expect Bartlett to cut a rug, Bacon-style. "The other thing that I don't do is dance, so there actually will be no cutting footloose for me."