For starters, he's assembled a band of brass instrument players, a pianist and some vocalists that he plans to put on stage by the end of the year. He posted a preview of his ensemble performing a 1940s jazz cover of Snoop Dogg's "Gin and Juice" complete with two vocalists, a trumpet player doing the "waaa waaaaas" with the working end of a plunger and even a megaphone-spouting singer doing the "mind on my money and my money on my mind" part in the whitest way possible.
Ballard says he's still talking with local venues about presenting a show, but he plans to have a date either in November of December when one of his singers finishes a current tour. He and his troupe of music makers are in the middle of recording some of their covers to help them pitch the show to venues.
He hasn't slowed up on producing more crammed song mashups and forced collaborations and compilations on his Instagram page, which has over 1.4 million followers. One of his latest entries should be of interest to those who consider themselves Texans. Ballard took the rhyme-spitting lyrics of Eminem's "Rap God," the 2013 single that holds the Guinness World Record for the "most words in a hit single," and delivered them with the twang of King of the Hill's Boomhauer. The vocals for Boomhauer's rap comes from an AI programmer in South America whom Ballard uses to mix his songs. Ballard has done similar tracks, where country legend Hank Williams Jr. sings a country-fied cover of NWA's "Straight Outta Compton" and rapper Snoop Dogg sings his "Gin and Juice" track to the melody for "The Bear Necessities" from Disney's The Jungle Book.
Ballard started his comedy music Instagram concept during the COVID outbreak with a polka cover of Lady Gaga's "Shallow" that he says "literally came to me in a dream." The track attracted more than 100,000 hits and launched his channel into a subscriber juggernaut that has won praise and even follows from big names such as Jack Black, Michael Bublé, Lin Manuel Miranda and members of The Roots.
Following the recent death of comic actor Paul Reubens, best known to fans as the lovable man-child Pee-wee Herman, Ballard shared his remix of The Champs' "Tequila" that Herman brought back to our consciousness in a memorable scene in Pee-wee's Big Adventure with the vocal lyrics of Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust." Reubens loved Ballard's remake so much that he shared the clip on Pee-wee's official Twitter page with a compliment: "But *nothing* is 'ruined' here, it's TERRIFIC!"
