Hear Butch Walker and Ashley Monroe’s Elegant Cover of Aerosmith’s ‘Angel’

About a week after Aerosmith announced their retirement from the road due to Steven Tyler’s irreparable vocal injury, Butch Walker honored the band by posting an acoustic rendition of their 1987 power ballad “Angel” on Instagram.

“I have such fond memories of growing up a long haired rock n roll kid in the rural south, listening to Toys In The Attic, Rocks, and every record that followed those,” he wrote. “When they cleaned up, made up, and reformed in the 80’s, they were a fucking FORCE and were not gonna be upstaged by all the current younger rock n roll bands that literally formed because of Aerosmith. So they put out a new record that blew the long hairs on our heads off called Permanent Vacation and it destroyed me. It had everything. Groove. Hooks. Swagger. Sex. Humor. Heaviness. And the almighty Power Ballad that everyone had to have in their arsenal in that decade.”

He went on to recall seeing them play “Angel” with his girlfriend at the Omni Arena in Atlanta as a teenager. “Sometimes memories just stick with you through all the years and all the insanity,” he wrote. “Steven’s voice on this jam is arguably one of the best performances of his life. Most dudes in their 20’s couldn’t sing with that much power, range and (ahem.. sweet) emotion that he was doing in his 40’s at the time. Thank you guys for inspiring so many artists to pick up guitars and learn rock n roll instead of football or calculus. They said we would never amount to anything doing this rock n roll bullshit. Welp. They were wrong.”

The reaction to the cover was so positive that he cut a proper studio version of the song alongside country singer Ashley Monroe, which he released on Wednesday — the anniversary of his father’s death from cancer (Walker chronicled in his grief in the superb 2015 LP Afraid of Ghosts). “I personally am sending this one out to my Dad,” Walker wrote on Instagram. “He told the family before he died, that he would always be our Angel, and would always be watching over us.”

Walker is also known today for his role as a producer who has worked with everyone from Taylor Swift, Katy Perry and Pink to Fall Out Boy, Weezer, and Green Day. But he’s recently gone back to his roots as the leader of rock band Marvelous 3. They’re touring now in celebration of the 25th anniversary of their LP Hey! Album, which featured their breakthrough hit “Freak of the Week.” Last week they released the end-of-summer jam “Psalm of the Summer.”

Walker is also marking the 20th anniversary of his album, Letters, the record that established him as a solo artist following the breakup of Marvelous 3. He’ll play four shows in celebration of Letters, two in Nashville and two in Los Angeles, later this month.