Storefront Music Is ‘Mad About The Girl’

There are very few things as readily sung about as love. Love is a many splendored thing. Love lifts us up where we belong. All you need is love. Ewan McGregor knew it. We know it. The entire wedding DJ industry knows it.

However, many of the love songs we know and… er… enjoy, tend to focus on the ‘boy meets girl’ variety of romantic desire rather than reflecting the glorious breadth of relationships the modern world celebrates. Thankfully, with their ‘Universal Love’ project, MGM Resorts set about to redress that balance.

Driven by McCann New York and Wool& Tusk, ‘Universal Love’ was a collection of traditional weddings songs reimagined for same-sex couples, featuring notable artists such as Bob Dylan, St. Vincent and Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie. For one particular track, New York-based commercial music company Storefront partnered with multi-instrumentalist/songwriter Valerie June and album EP Rob Kaplan to reimagine the song, ‘Mad About the Boy’, as ‘Mad About the Girl’ with an orchestral jazz arrangement and the help of a 20-piece ensemble.

We took the opportunity to chat to Storefront’s Partners/Composers John "Scrapper" Sneider and Adam Elk about their work on the project and how jobs like this fit the company’s endearing ethos.

How did you get involved in the Universal Love project?

We were approached by Rob Kaplan of Wool & Tusk who was producing the project for McCann. We had collaborated on similar projects before and there was a trust that we could deliver the type of iconic arrangement they were looking for.

Were you approached to do a particular song or was the choice up to you? Likewise, how was Valerie June brought in?

Valerie June was suggested to McCann by Rob Kaplan and they picked 'Mad About the Boy' (now 'Mad About the Girl') before we got involved.

The concept of the album is to reimagine famous songs - what’s your initial approach to this? How much from the original recording technique did you want to retain (to make it recognizable) and how much to change? Was it a difficult balance?

Our task was to reimagine “Mad About The Girl” in a way that melded Valerie’s unique sound with a classic arrangement from the 1960s. It was important in this instance to create something fresh but iconic sounding that would reinforce the message of Universal Love.

The recording was with a 20-piece ensemble - can you tell us how that went?

We recorded the entire ensemble at Storefront on vintage microphones, preamps, compressors and eqs. It was particularly rewarding to track the strings and horns and have them sound exactly like records you have from the 1950s and 60s.

It was amazing working with Valerie who was equally excited about the project and gave us a really heartfelt performance.

Do you have any other reimaginings up your sleeve?

In fact, we just reimagined David Bowie’s 'The Man Who Sold the World' for Netflix for the trailer of Ozark Season 2. It’s a completely different take on the original and plays into the storm of drama surrounding Jason Bateman’s family as they try to survive! Really fun gig. Again, all the real instrumentation is what brings it to life!

What projects would you love to take on?

Any project that is altruistic in nature, or challenges us to break out of our comfort zone are things we get excited about. We love things that are period specific, be it 100 years old, or from last decade, making something sound authentically as it would have in a period is a challenge we always invite.

Speaking of the project, you’ve mentioned that it ‘reinforces Storefront’s mission’. How would you sum that up? What’s Storefront’s USP?

It was an honor to be a part of such an important project and it highlighted our ability to deliver an album quality arrangement in the company of such a diverse group of famous artists.

Our USP as a boutique original music house is that we stop at nothing to create high-quality authentic productions. Everyone we work with has a foot in the record world, and before we send anything to our clients we ask “is this album quality?”.

You and Scrapper have been collaborating since 2001 - what have you seen change since then?

For us, the biggest change is that agency creatives don’t come to music sessions anymore. Our best days in this crazy biz are when we have clients in the room with us collaborating on something we both believe in. That collaboration leads to better final products in our experience.

What’s up next for you?

Cool projects going on for Weiden and Kennedy for Vitamin Water and some fun Song projects for Citi.

We are also both actively keeping our respective performing and recording careers going.  I just got back from playing some jazz festivals in Europe and Adam’s group The Mommyheads is heading across the pond in September for a tour as well.