Deer Tick to Cover Beatles, Lou Reed, Elvis Costello Albums for 10th Anniversary

Deer Tick will mark their 10th anniversary this December with a six-night residency at New York’s Brooklyn Bowl that celebrates the music they’ve made together… and the albums of five other noteworthy artists that inspired them. For the first five nights of the roots rockers’ December 26-31 residency, the band will cover an entire classic album by a different artist alongside their own tracks.

On December 26th, the band will play NRBQ’s jazz-rock favorite Tiddlywinks along with their own debut LP, 2007’s War Elephant. The band is also set to cover Lou Reed‘s Transformer, the Beatles‘ Meet the Beatles, Devo‘s Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!, and Elvis Costello‘s My Aim Is True. The residency culminates with a December 31st New Year’s Eve gig that features a fan-chosen set list devoted entirely to Deer Tick’s catalogue.

“I knew this day would come sooner or later. It doesn’t feel like 10 years,” frontman John McCauley tells Rolling Stone about the band’s Brooklyn residency and the five albums they chose to cover. “Some of our choices are pretty straightforward, like Meet The Beatles, and others are a little bit more unexpected, like Tiddlywinks. I’m sure a bunch of people are going to say things like ‘Why didn’t you pick a Nirvana album?’ or ‘Why aren’t you doing a Replacements album?’, but we’ve already showed that side of us. I’m excited to show you how much I love Devo! I ruined that cassette playing it over and over again in my first Oldsmobile.” 

This isn’t the first time McCauley and Deer Tick have dressed up in what Phish calls “a musical costume,” as they also have a Nirvana cover band named Deervana. Dave Grohl even asked McCauley to perform with the surviving members of Nirvana at a small Brooklyn gig following the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony.

“Whether it was playing Nirvana songs or not, I’ve always fantasized about playing with Dave Grohl behind the drum set. He’s definitely one of my favorites,” McCauley told Rolling Stone after the concert. “I got an email from Dave personally. But it was the day before April Fool’s Day, so I didn’t really get my hopes up. It could have been anybody with a fake email account that says, ‘Hi, I’m Dave Grohl.’ That would have been a pretty good prank to pull on me…Then it got real legit and I was like, ‘Holy shit! This is weird, man.’ But let’s do it.”

Presale tickets for all six of Deer Tick’s 10th anniversary shows at Brooklyn Bowl will go on sale Wednesday, September 10th at noon ET at Ticketfly using the code “DEERTICK10.” All other tickets will be available on Friday, September 12th.