EXCLUSIVE: Loose Cattle Premiere Video for Cover of Lady Gaga’s ‘Joanne’ Featuring Lucinda Williams

Loose Cattle, the band fronted by by New Orleanian Kimberly Kaye and two-time TONY and Grammy winner Michael Cerveris - who is set to star in the new Broadway musical of Tammy Faye with music by Elton John – have reimagined the title track to Lady Gaga’s 2016 project, Joanne, as a yearning, harmony-soaked instant alt-country classic.

"I’m still sometimes unclear on whether this is real or I’ve simply micro-dosed my psychedelics incorrectly again, but it appears we have a duet of a Lady Gaga song with Lucinda Williams on this album? It’s so screamingly improbable on paper,” laughs Kimbery Kaye. “I first heard 'Joanne' when Lady Gaga released it back in 2017, and was immediately enamored with the acoustic guitar-only opening showcasing her emotive vocals on a platter. Because it’s just one voice and a stripped-down arrangement throughout, I heard a harmony in my head instantly and thought it could be interesting as a duet with Michael.”

“Gaga originally wrote it as a tribute to a loved one lost to illness quite young, and I’d been trying to rebuild my life after spending the better part of 2016-2017 in organ failure,” she explains about why the song resonated with her so much. “My being sick so young had radically impacted so many people in my life, and taught me there are dozens of voices woven into every individual’s loss.”

“Covering the song felt daunting,” Kaye admits. “Gaga won the Grammy for her vocal, and I can’t do what Gaga does. But I felt the ‘blood harmony’ thing Michael and I have been so lucky to find together tells the story Gaga wrote in a new but still reverent way. The addition of Lucinda’s voice was one of the happier surprises of my life, and the layered chorus she, Michael, and I built together sounds to my ears like a family singing around the table. There’s something intergenerational about the finished product that I hope Lady Gaga wouldn’t be disappointed with.”

‘Joanne’ is taken from the New Orleans country-rock ensemble latest album Someone’s Monster, due out on 1st November.

“As a petite writer whose voice might have some character, but has never been particularly showy, Lucinda Williams has obviously been more than a hero to me,” Kaye says of the singer. “Her albums were hard evidence sorely needed that you don’t have to have Beyoncé’s riffs or Aretha’s volume to be frontwoman, you just have to have a story and breath it out of you with emotional honesty. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to hear her singing her ‘can’t wait to see you soar’ on this track without getting weepy."

Watch the video for ‘Joanne’ directed, filmed and edited by Joshua Britt and Neilson Hubbard of Neighborhoods Apart Productions below.

Loose Cattle is led in tandem by Michael Cerveris and Kimberly Kaye - a onetime couple, enduring friends and lifelong working artists. Kaye is a native Jerseyite, conservatory-trained in trumpet, jazz vocals and musical theater; she also has a checkered past as a teenaged ska punk, touring on the Warped Tour circuit in the late ‘90s with her first bands. Cerveris, who grew up in Appalachian West Virginia, garnered his first Tony Award nomination originating the title role in the Who’s Tommy on Broadway under the mentorship of Pete Townshend and later stepped into the lead character’s iconic platform boots for off-Broadway and West End runs of Hedwig and the Angry Inch; he also played guitar on tour with Husker Du’s Bob Mould. He received a Grammy for the Tommy cast album, and later won a matched pair of Tonys for the musicals Assassins and Fun Home.

"Kim and I have both brought in left field ideas for the band to cover over the years, but I have to confess that hers are usually the further out and better,” Michael Cerveris says. “It doesn’t make much sense to cover a song unless you have something new to say with it or a personal lens to hear it through. This was such a personal song to Kim and I just wanted to provide her voice the setting it deserved. Asking Lucinda to join us was one of those things that gets said at her house in the course of nights of wine and conversation around her table. She said yes right away and suggested we go into their friend Ray Kennedy’s studio in Nashville. Watching her find a way into the song that honored the song and yet was wholly herself was a masterclass in interpreting a song. Which is essentially what we feel every time we see her sing."

Someone’s Monster is Loose Cattle’s third long-player following up 2021’s Heavy Lifting and the 2017 holiday album Seasonal Affective Disorder, and along with Lucinda Williams, also features Patterson Hood of Drive-By Truckers and Louis Michot of the multi-Grammy-winning Lost Bayou Ramblers.

Someone’s Monster is released on Single Lock Records on 1st November.