OK! Drums and vox up, and lose the kazoo. Got it. Thanks for the comments, everyone!

Wow Bit, never heard one of yours before. I must say, your voice has that same character that I loved about Joe Cocker.
 
Really well done cover, and your mixing skills are self evident.
 
Regards,
Dan
 

Thanks, Dan. Hopefully, my strategy of croaking out a tune at 5:00 AM proves safer than Mr. Cocker's life plan.

wow - the vocal is excellent Dave - really soulful

Great cover of a classic!  Your vocal work is exceptionally impressive.  Nice work also on the string synths and choir.
 
John B.

Wow, I'm super impressed with this.  Vocal work is spot on perfect, to my ears.  You have a comfortable sounding voice and this early AM singing is a fabulous idea.  The music and performance is top shelf professional.  Love hearing good musicians in their element.  
 
I don't believe the vocals are buried one bit.  If you raise them up in the mix, I'm afraid it will have that vocal-centric modern pop sound where music = background for singers.  The drums definitely need to come up, they were hard to hear in several places.  Just my two cents, bit.  
 
Made my morning.  Thanks for sharing.

Is there a difference between staying up until 5:00 am and waking up at 5:00 am? 

Great job on this classic tune, really good emotional vocals.

Great rendition of a classic song. Really liked your vocal, dude. Lot of character and vibe.

jackson white
Is there a difference between staying up until 5:00 am and waking up at 5:00 am? 

Good question! The answer is "yes". If I work on something overnight - assuming I've been singing rather than partying - by morning my vocals will have become more consistent, more controlled and prettier. Something to do with stretching the throat muscles, perhaps.
 
But when I wake up at 4:00 or 5:00 I sound like Lurch from the Addams Family. In this case, it just happened to work out. I should note that the high harmony was added much later in the day, post-coffee.
 
I have a new mix, which I haven't posted yet. Prompted by suggestions here, I agreed that the drums were a little limp. Rather than making the drums louder, I added parallel distortion to them. This is one of my standard tricks and I don't know why it didn't occur to me that distortion would be a natural fit for a classic pop song.
 
My go-to plugin for this is Devastor from D16 Group. I use its internal filters, usually applying a wide band-pass that I sweep around to find the sweet spot for the drums, which usually ends up around 1.5 - 3 KHz. Soloed, it sounds nasty, like a tiny transistor radio in the next room. But in context, it lends definition to kick and toms and a nice crack to the snare, making the drums sound louder without actually being louder.