Dale Crover (Melvins, Nirvana) Covers Neil Young and the Melvins on New Single, Announces EP

It's a little known fact that Dale Crover played a young version of Neil Young in the official music video for "Harvest Moon," but it's for that reason the Melvins and former Nirvana drummer decided to release his own version of the track. Dale's new single combines his version of "Harvest Moon" with a cover of "The Bit," a blistering Melvins jam he co-wrote with Buzz Osborne. He's also announced a new EP called Get Yer Ba-Ba's Out out September 4th via Joyful Noise both digitally and on double-grooved, locked-grooved and reverse-grooved vinyl.

Dale regales us about his experience filming the music video for Harvest Moon:

"Years ago I played Young Neil Young in the video for Harvest Moon. It was quite a surreal experience! When I met Neil, I was made up to look just like him. Not that I didn’t already look a bit like him. That is how I got the part, after all. When I meet Neil, he starts explaining to me that he has this pair of pants that he wants me to wear for the video, and the mechanics of how the zipper works since it was broken! Not only did I play his younger self, but I also doubled for him. When he’s seen on stage playing, I’m dancing with his wife and when he’s dancing with her, I’m on stage.

There’s a scene where I’m driving with young Pegi Young and I’m not looking where I’m driving because I’m paying attention to her. I had to drive off the side of a skinny country road into a ravine, not looking where I was driving. The first few takes were fine but on the last shot, I jammed the rear fender of Neil‘s actual 1955 Cadillac into a stump. That stump saved me from rolling the car off the side of the hill, surely killing us both!

I thought it would be fun to cover this song and combine it with Melvins “The Bit”, a song I co wrote with Buzz Osborne, since both songs share the same guitar tuning. I started performing the songs live and knew right away that I wanted to record them, making it the spur for this new EP."

ABOUT GET YER BA-BA'S OUT

Dale Crover looks a lot like Neil Young—enough so that Neil himself recruited Crover to play the, um, young version of himself in the iconic “Harvest Moon” music video. Neil Young’s mid-career hit has worked its way into thousands of bar-band repertoires over the years, but it’s hard to imagine anyone more qualified to cover the song than Crover. It’s owed to his presence in the mysterious video and to his long history of rock ‘n’ roll evangelism, both as a solo artist and over his 43-year tenure as drummer for the Pacific Northwest rock institution Melvins. This is a band that’s pickled everything from Wings’ “Let Me Roll It” to the Cars’ “Candy-O” in their pungent brine. Let’s not forget, either, that Crover kicked off his solo career with Dale Crover, one of three solo albums released by Melvins in 1992 in tribute to KISS’s own run of solo albums from 1978. To Crover, covering “Harvest Moon” is just another stop on his long tour through an alternative Great American Songbook.

Crover’s version of “Harvest Moon” opens his new EP Get Yer Ba-Ba’s Out, which comes out September 4th, 2026 on Joyful Noise, and it barges into a rendition of Melvins’ Stag classic “The Bit,” because Crover wrote the guitar part—it’s in the same key, and why the hell not? The EP additionally features acoustic renditions of three songs from Crover’s solo album Glossolalia (“Doug Yuletide,” “Rings,” and “Jane”), one from 2021’s Rat-A-Tat-Tat! (“I Can’t Help You There”), and the brand-new title track. It’s the third solo acoustic album to come from the Melvins camp, following founding member Buzz Osborne’s This Machine Kills Artists and Gift of Sacrifice, both of which were also recorded with longtime Melvins engineer and collaborator Toshi Kasai.

The roots of this solo album came from his 2024 sets opening for power-pop legends Redd Kross (for whom Crover drums from time to time), during which Crover would perform a DJ set followed by a brief acoustic performance of songs from his three solo albums. Each DJ set ended with “Ba Ba,” a song by Brazilian rapper Braulio Fogón, which inspired the title of the album along with the classic Rolling Stones live album Get Yer Ya Ya’s Out! (the first Stones album Crover bought) and the vocables of glossolalia, known to the layman as “speaking in tongues.” The lack of a full band came out of economic necessity at first, but as audiences responded well to Crover’s one-man show, he began to scratch at the possibility of releasing an acoustic EP. With help from Kasai and bassist Sarah Linton of Harshmellow and The Schizophonics, Crover recorded the six songs on the EP at Sounds of Sirens.

This intimate setting of Crover’s songs here contrasts with the electric, guest-heavy Glossolalia, which featured a rare cameo from Tom Waits and guest features from kindred spirit Ty Segall and fellow Northwest legend Kim Thayil of Soundgarden. Yet it’d be hard to call this music stripped-down—it feels more like a further development on the glam-damaged power pop Crover’s been producing since he kicked off the second phase of his solo career on 2017’s The Fickle Finger of Fate. Kasai’s arrangements fill the available empty space with slide guitar, Jew’s harp, assorted bells and other idiophones. And though the instrument on which Crover made his name is absent, replaced by a distant smattering of hand drums, the spirit of his music has never been clearer—a restless desire to explore new territory combined with a deep love of rock ‘n’ roll, the same that built the Melvins into one of the most interesting and influential bands of their generation.

Tracklist

1. Harvest Moon/The Bit

2. Doug Yuletide

3. Get Yer Ba-Ba’s Out

4. Rings

5. I Can’t Help You There

6. Jane