Emitt Rhodes, Mary Margaret O'Hara, + Others Celebrate The Bee Gees on Charity Tribute Record

"The Bee Gees are one of the strangest, most complicated, most brilliant groups ever to achieve pop stardom," Rolling Stone's Josh Eells wrote in his 2014 profile of Barry Gibb. The new 80 Proof Media tribute album, To Love the Bee Gees: A Tribute to The Brothers Gibb, which will be released next Friday, November 27th, proves that yet again. Featuring 17 artists and 28 songs from a five decade mix of artists including Isobel Campbell of Belle & Sebastian/Mark Lanegan fame, baroque-pop cult hero Emitt Rhodes, Canadian "national treasure" (in the words of Michael Stipe), Mary Margaret O'Hara. Mexican funk heavyweights Kinky, and former Boo Radleys' guitarst/songwriter Martin Carr, To Love The Bee Gees is a project that will thrill existing fans and break in many new ones, while also highlighting some of Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb's less celebrated--but no less astonishing--material.

All this music has been made in the service of a worthy cause: profits from To Love the Bee Gees: A Tribute To The Brothers Gibb will go to the Boston-based Foundation to be Named Later and their Peter Gammons Scholarship program. "What a terrific album," says the Hall of Fame baseball scribe, whose passion for rock'n'roll has always been right up there with his ability to break Red Sox trade news. "Nothing makes me happier than to combine the work we do at the scholarship fund with good music. Listeners are in for a treat."

The record will be available physically and digitally in both standard and deluxe versions. The deluxe edition 2 CD set is released as a special-tie in with the Coalition of Independent Music Stores' Black Friday/Record Store Day on November 27th. No mere collection of outtakes, this extended set explores and expands the notion of interpretation with 11 often radically different alternate takes of the same songs (by the same artists) from the standard album, as well as two exclusive bonus covers.

The psychedelic gem, "Every Christian Lion Hearted Man Will Show You", is the first single from the record with a tribute by SheLoom, featuring orchestral pop demi-god Eric Matthews, Jordan Zadorozny (formerly from Blinker The Star), and Filippo Gaetani. Matthews considers the Bee Gees to be "more or less the most important band in history."

Birthing To Love The Bee Gees was no easy task. As esteemed journalist David Wild writes in his accompanying essay, "The group's many highs are so tremendously and uniquely high, they are hard to touch, much less to better." But this collection offers a remarkable and balanced survey, showing off many sides of the Bee Gees, and new sides of the artists through their cover choices and performances.

The Bee Gees were a band of brothers, and for producers Todd Bisson and Bennett Freed, To Love the Bee Gees was a true labor of brotherly love. The two men had been friends in music fandom and the music business for more than a decade without the younger Bisson knowing that Freed had once run the Bee Gees fan club... which Bisson himself was a member of in the late 1970s.

Bisson first had the notion for this tribute in 2011, when a Bee Gees track he somehow didn't know, "Kilburn Towers" (from 1968's Idea) came on the radio. "That perfect bit of pop psychedelia immediately replaced 'Love You Inside And Out' as my favorite Bee Gees song," says Bisson. "I listened to it dozens of times over the next few days. From that seed, this 1200-day process of creating a great big thank you to Barry, Robin and Mo grew. Our goal was to cover the waterfront musically and the Bee Gees career-wise. I really do think we accomplished that. There is blues, rock, folk, soul, pop, funk, electronica and dub on this album and songs from 1967 to 1993, both well-known and obscure."

Track listing for Standard Album version:

The Silver Seas - "I Started A Joke"
SheLoom - "Every Christian Lion Hearted Man Will Show You"
Isobel Campbell - "How Deep Is Your Love"
Emitt Rhodes - "How Can You Mend A Broken Heart"
Elayna Boynton - "To Love Somebody"
Kinky - "Living Together"
Myron & E - "Jive Talkin'"
Dylan Gardner - "Massachusetts"
Aaron Tap - "Cucumber Castle"
Brazzaville - "Fanny (Be Tender With My Love"
Mary Margaret O'Hara - "Tell Me Why"
Martin Carr - "Stayin' Alive"
Low Leaf - "Blue Island"
Gloom Balloon - "Words"
Jess Delgado - "I Can Bring Love"

Isobel Campbell was one of the first artists who agreed to participate. She says, "I've great admiration and respect for any artist or group of artists who possess the rare courage to stand apart from the herd and status quo and dare to be different. The Bee Gees were such a band." She continues, "I chose to record 'How Deep Is Your Love' because the words and music resonated deeply with me. I love the simplicity of the beautiful heartfelt lyrics underscored by the brother's intricate harmonies. I also loved the fact that I could think of the song and sing it on a spiritual level as well as a more traditional love song."

Rising to the challenge of "To Love Somebody," a song written for Otis Redding before he died, is Elayna Boynton (best-known for the end title theme to Quentin Tarantino's "Django Unchained") and guitarist Patrick Park, who bring soul, heartbreak and a bit of vocal pyrotechnics to their version on the standard album, plus some extra lyrics that happened spontaneously during the recording session for the deluxe edition's stark, country-blues-ish alternate take.

Other highlights include Kinky rescuing the funk blast of "Living Together" from album track obscurity; Bebopalula, featuring Chris Price who also produced Rhodes' tracks, conjuring a power-poptastic version of "Melody Fair"; singer and Matt Nathanson sideman Aaron Tap, recording as the Boy Joys (named after the Joy Boys, an Australian band that backed the Gibbs early on) doffing a thrillingly modern, yet fastidiously faithful version of "Cucumber Castle"; and Gloom Balloon's "Words," which is on the record thanks to a vote by the project's 12,000-plus Facebook followers.

Apart from the herd, and yet one of the most popular bands of all-time, at their 1997 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Bee Gees had reportedly sold more than 200 million records over the course of their career. But, as revered as the brothers are, not all of their music is completely known. Says Bisson: "Even after everything that has been done on this album by this crazy talented group of musicians whom we now consider friends, we've only scratched the surface." Neither the previously mentioned 'Kilburn Towers' nor 'Love You Inside And Out,' wound up on the record." "Irony and incentive," he adds, "maybe next time."

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