Saturday, September 24, 2011

Single Song Sunday: Cat Stevens’ Trouble
(w/ Eef Barzelay, Marissa Nadler, Kristen Hersh & more!)





It’s been a tough few weeks, for body and spirit. Our inner city school is badly overstocked this year, with classes too full to manage, and hallways that ripple with energy we can barely control; the stress among the faculty is sky-high, and we’re hard pressed not to take it out on each other. Limping into such an environment every morning puts me at a severe disadvantage, but limp I must: I seem to have torn something in my knee, trying to compensate for a flared disk in my lower back, and have grow accustomed to a constant haze of low-grade pain.

If I was a more soulful man, I suppose, I’d be singing the blues. But I’m a folkfan, at heart; turning to the darker, sparser branches of the singer-songwriter movement soothes my breast better than anything else. I’ve been steeping in Nick Drake, Elliott Smith, and other thin outsider voices, trying to find the perfect representative to speak my pain into being, and calm it through the communion of folk.

And then the playlist skipped, and I remembered Cat Stevens.

We first covered the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens way back in 2007 here at Cover Lay Down, citing his uncanny ability to put words and melody to peace, love, and a connection to the earth as ample evidence for continued consideration of the soft-spoken singer-songwriter as one of the most significant artists of the 20th century. But Stevens does loss and loneliness too, as evidenced by the bitterness of Wild World. And I will ever be floored by Trouble, this week’s Single Song Sunday subject: a majestic piece, elementally simple, surprisingly soaring, an apt and adept personification of the fickle fates that beset the universal everyman, written when the artist was 19, during a year of convalescence following a near-fatal bout of tuberculosis

The newest addition to this canon of coverage comes courtesy of Eef Barzelay (recently featured here), whose recent foray into Kickstarter promotion produced not only the intended EP of Journey covers, but a bonus disk of songs selected by generous patrons, who shelled out $150 for the right to select songs for Eef to take on. Barzelay’s torn, mournful take on Trouble is both a perfect sampler for that LP-length collection and a powerful reminder of the potency of the song itself.

Pair it with Lisa Haley’s Zydeco-Cajun country, the Holmes Brothers’ sweet blues harmonies, Bruce Robison’s sparse country ballad, a summery jam from Widespread Panic, crashing indie waves from Kristen Hersh, electric guitar folk from Eddie Vedder, a mellow, as-yet unattributed folkrock cover once thought to be by Oasis, and delicate takes from Marissa Nadler and Elliot Smith, and you’ve got a set that once again proves the flexibility of great songwriting.



Posted by boyhowdy at 10:15 pm | 8 comments
Labels: Cat Stevens, Single Song Sunday

Thursday, September 22, 2011

RIP R.E.M: A repost, in tribute
w/ covers from Amber Rubarth, Cry Cry Cry, Rosie Thomas, Redbird & more!

The blogs are buzzing with yesterday’s announcement, via a terse yet sincere statement on their website, that Athens, GA hometown heroes R.E.M. are calling it quits after three decades on the road, the radio, and the cultural consciousness. We first covered the genre-defining band back in 2009, so rather than rehash their path from college radio to iconic mainstream success, we’re taking the opportunity to revisit that older post today in memoriam – with a couple of bonus covers of Losing My Religion, from more recent CLD faves Amber Rubarth and Joshua James, to bulk up our original set.







I enjoy a good challenge. So when a recent and otherwise well-written treatise on the socio-economic function of cover songs past and present declared the R.E.M. catalog “too cryptic to survive being covered”, I set out to amass a collection of songs which would prove the author wrong.

My dubious pursuit was confounded a bit by a long-time personal apathy for R.E.M.’s particularly angsty, often melodramatic performance style, as filtered through frontman Michael Stipe’s voice and phrasing, which just aren’t to taste. Sure, there’s a few songs I wouldn’t change the station for — the driving guitar of Fall On Me, for example, or the deceptively cheerful pop surface of Man on the Moon. But these are predominantly band-driven songs, where so many others of the canon are singer showcases.

It’s a personal choice: I don’t like listening to Dylan either. But as with Dylan, and so many of the popular artists whose songbooks comprise our Covered in Folk features, there’s a recognizable genius under there, couched in a palatable form. It is no accident that R.E.M. is well established and well respected; love ‘em or hate ‘em, their influence, particularly in the emergence of college alternative radio, is legion and undeniable, and their reputation deserved.


The combination of cultural cache and strong songwriting has produced a world of broad and eminently listenable covers. It’s telling that when Stereogum decided to solicit current indie darlings for their second cover tribute, it was seminal R.E.M. album Automatic for the People which they ended up reconstructing track-for-track. And, as with so many previous features, that many of my favorite cover artists have taken on the R.E.M. songbook speaks volumes to its appeal and its potential among folk musicians and fans of a certain generational outlook.

My top ten list of covers consistently includes Grant-Lee Phillips‘ incredible version of So. Central Rain; I’ve posted it twice here before, and each time it has elicited comments from the readership. There’s more familiar covers here, too, from Rosie Thomas‘ lovely version of The One I Love, which pays tribute to Sufjan’s popular bootlegs of the same tune, to well-played cuts from folk supergroups Redbird and Cry Cry Cry.

Tori Amos and The Corrs come from that same AAA and college rock region of the genre map R.E.M. helped establish. Great Big Sea trend towards the sea chanty made modern, but most folkies will know the name. Stereogum’s coverage is predominantly indie rock, but the names are recognizable to those who come via the indiefolk music blogs. In the end, there’s nothing rare here, except perhaps the live cover of REM obscurity Hairshirt from Glen Hansard‘s recent appearance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.

But surely that familiarity proves the point. After all, if folk is in the ownership and the interpretation of song, then cryptic becomes a relative term, and coverage itself proves palatability. For in the end, is there greater foundation for love than the recognition of the soul, the spark of something sensible to the self, and the subsequent struggle to own it? And is it not this love, in the hands of the talented and thoughtful, which makes coverage great, and tributes worthy? Listen, and judge for yourself.



Today’s bonus coverfolk tracks give R.E.M. the chance to take on a few core folksingers, from Hall of Famer Leonard Cohen to the man whose original version of Gentle On My Mind won a Grammy for Best Folk Performance the same year Glen Campbell made it famous. After all, as the banner says, we do covers of folksong here, too:

Posted by boyhowdy at 11:53 am | 5 comments
Labels: R.E.M., reposts

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Kevin Fox Covers: Paul Simon, Kate Bush, The Eurythmics, etc.
(w/ more cellofolk coverage from Ben Sollee, Fiddlers 4, Lindsay Mac et. al.)




As we noted in our recent profile of Crooked Still, the addition of the cello to the folk repertoire is relatively recent. Indeed, it would not be entirely wrong to credit founding member Rashaad Eggleston, who has since moved on to become a core member of stringfolk supergroup Fiddlers 4, with broadening these particular boundaries for a huge percentage of the folk audience.

But of course the much larger trend towards experimental expansion and genre-blur in the indie world comes into play here, too, making the rock violinist (or the rock cellist duo) a close cousin to the folk cellist in the post-20th-century marketplace of sound. And sure enough, we’ve posted singer-songwriter folk cellists before, like indie darling Ben Sollee and Falcon Ridge Folk Fest emerging artist Lindsay Mac, and found dozens more from all walks of folk on the radar, though arguably, the work of appalachian inheritor bands like Fiddlers 4, of orchestral folk and “chamberfolk” groups like Childsplay and The Folk Arts Quartet, of indiepop experimentalists such as The Portland Cello Project and their various rock-to-jazz-to-gypsyfolk members, and – more progenitally – folk-influenced pieces from the jazz-fusion Turtle Island String Quartet and others, better represent the larger systemic shift which has brought this unwieldy instrument, oft cited for having the timbre and tonal range most closest to the male human voice, into the canon.

Regardless of how it emerged, the willingness to accept cello music as folk is an interesting prerequisite for new discovery here at Covert Lay Down. And so we come together this weekend to explore the fruits of such discovery, in the person of one Kevin Fox, cellist and singer-songwriter extraordinaire.

Today’s post was almost a forgotten one-shot, based around a YouTube cover of Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes which got lost in the shuffle, resurfacing too late to make it into our recent set of Shod Coverfolk. But persistence paid off when I went looking for a studio version, on the off chance that Canadian cellist Kevin Fox had a larger body of work.

I’ve since learned much more about Kevin Fox. For starters, though in live-via-YouTube performance, his looped acoustic pop Paul Simon cover seemed pleasantly mild and measured when put against Ben Sollee’s more deliberately ragged, slipperier oveure, such comparison is unfair: Fox aims for something quite different, and achieves it marvelously. Instead, a closer listen – to this cover, and to Fox’s studio work as a set – reveals a preference for sparse, perfectly crafted, acoustic-driven contemporary soundscapes, and a particular talent for projecting darkness and light through the balance of the plucked and the bowed against his clear, breath-tinged singer-songwriter’s voice.

Fox’s stringwork is precise, his arrangements tight: there’s clearly a classical influence here, and mastery to match. But his larger body of work reveals a genuine eagerness to perform and write in multiple corners of the pop, rock, and folk spectrum. In addition to his solo work, the Halifax-born Fox is a frequent collaborator, arranger, and touring companion for a whole spectrum of talented countrymen and countrywomen, from Kathleen Edwards, Sarah Harmer, Danny Michel, Raine Maida, Stephen Page and Celine Dion, in and around his native provinces. To each, he brings the right note of atmosphere, just as he does to his original compositions, and their layered arrangements for voice, cello, and little else.

Finding Kevin Fox could not have happened without the turn of mind which looks for the folk in such instrumentation, it’s true. His tendency to stick to the provinces makes him harder to find; his chamelonesque history as a sideman and behind-the-scenes post-composition arranger makes him harder still to categorize. But once discovered, Fox outs himself as a soulful folk artist in every carefully constructed note of his solo pieces, even as his own larger body of work reveals him to be a major player in the grand contemporary genre-blurring tradition which continues to grow and spread north of the border. Listen; I think you’ll hear it, too:



  • Stephen Page w/ Kevin Fox: Halelujah (orig. Leonard Cohen)


    (live from Jack Layton’s State Funeral, August 27, 2011)



Want more? Kevin Fox has three albums in print through his website – a potent and easy entry to a highly recommended artist on the rise, especially for those who cannot make it to shows above the border – and each one comes highly recommended, though only the two most recent of these include coverage.

But since we started in a larger context, let’s end the lesson today with some bonus cellofolk from others mentioned herein, both for comparison’s sake and to pay tribute to the others whose careers support and legitimize today’s feature subject. I think you’ll find it a diverse set – but no less apt, given the myriad overlapping of sounds and sensibilities in the modern folkways, and our ongoing celebration of the vast and varied tent we call “folk”.



Previously on Cover Lay Down: Crooked Still covers The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Gillian Welch and more.

Posted by boyhowdy at 4:29 pm | 4 comments
Labels: Ben Sollee, Fiddlers 4, Kevin Fox, Lindsay Mac

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

A Decade of Crooked Still
With an EXCLUSIVE Beatles cover from their upcoming EP!





Crooked Still is one of our most-covered artists here on Cover Lay Down, and for good reason: their work continues to resonate and evolve in deep and breathtaking ways, while retaining the core beauty and fire which has marked their work since the beginning. From their emergence in 2001 as a firey quartet out of the Boston collegiate scene, framed around an innovative, improvisational style, and high-energy stringplay at the center of what was otherwise a sparse yet nuanced tradfolk stringband sound, to the sonic expansion of last year’s Some Strange Country, their sound and sensibility have been a personal touchstone, an ongoing revelation of the crystal perfection that can be found in reinventing the American songbook.

But the seminal Boston-based quartet-turned-quintet – equally at home at Celtic, folk, and Bluegrass festivals – is also worth recognition for the influence they have had on their peers. As I wrote last year when Some Strange Country was released, through a decade of live performance and pitch-perfect studio recordings, Crooked Still has defined a new sonic space in the post-millennial atmosphere, leading the way for a rising generation of hybridfolk that continues to explode into our ears and hearts.

And their impact on the world of music at large continues to reverberate, as the sound of the cello continues to wend and weave its way into the folk canon, and the newest post-grass bands continue to emerge and experiment with the beauty and pain that can be found in the songs of and beyond the Appalachian region.


We first featured Crooked Still here at Cover Lay Down in June of 2008, just a few months after our own birth as a blog; at the time, the band was about to release their first album as a 5-piece, sans oddball founding cellist Rashaad Eggleston but with new members Tristan Clarridge (cello) and Brittany Haas (fiddle), and we were thrilled to be able to report that the aptly-named Still Crooked, although inevitably shifted somewhat from their earlier work, was a stellar addition to their body of work.

Since then, we’ve celebrated together as Crooked Still graced stages at Grey Fox and Falcon Ridge, Newport and Telluride; as they released new, transformative covers of the Rolling Stones and more, and revived others from earlier albums, including warm, pitch-perfect takes on Bill Monroe, Ola Belle Johnson, Doc Watson, Gillian Welch, and a holy host of traditional folksongs. And all along, we’ve found compatriots, from USA Today to Sing Out to NPR, who named the band among their favorites, citing their influence, their deliberate craftsmanship, and their musical genius as common markers of their success.

Now, this year, Crooked Still hits their one-decade milestone, and although they have announced that they’ll be taking a small hiatus from touring in 2012 in order to keep the creative juices flowing, and to maintain the core friendship and collaboration which have underlaid their success, they’re still going strong. Indeed, in honor of that sacred ground covered, Autumn arrives with a dual promise: a series of October concerts in and around New England celebrating their tenth anniversary together, culminating in two 10 Year Anniversary Shows at the Somerville Theater on October 14 and 15 (and followed by a swing through the American Northwest), and a brand new EP titled Friends of Fall, to be released on Signature Sounds on October 25.


Having steeped in it overnight, we’re proud to report that Friends of Fall is a powerful addition to the Crooked Still canon. A seven-song EP which contains delightful, sweet, energetic covers of Paul Simon’s American Tune, John Hartford, and The Beatles, plus four well-crafted originals, the collection bears the signature sound of past and present that the band’s envelope-pushing canon has come to represent. Gleeful and somber in turn as always, framed around the stunning, hopping banjo wizardry of Dr. Gregory Listz, the slow, low rhythms of double bass man Corey DiMarino, the tight dual stringwork of Haas and Clarridge, and of course, the beautiful, breathy vocals and arrangements of Aoife O’Donovan, the EP is a delight, and an apt reminder of the impact and depth of Crooked Still as they celebrate their legacy.

And so, as our own celebration, we present a much-expanded compendium of coverage from a decade on the road, in the studio, and at the forefront of the new folk canon – including an exclusive pre-release cover of The Beatles’ We Can Work It Out, from Friends of Fall, which races and swoops like a desperate lover’s heartbeat, and has me dancing around the room as we speak. Taken as a set, in historical sequence, you can hear the evolution from crazed and rearranged to something deeper, something richer, marked by the emergence of O’Donovan as a songwriting force, and of the musical collaboration which underscores their success.

You can hear, in other words, why Crooked Still remains a cornerstone of the Boston Folk revival, even as their members continue to push the envelope, together and through more experimental and traditional side projects. And why the release of new work into the Crooked Still canon remains a cause for rejoicing, even as we celebrate the journey which brought them here.


  • Crooked Still: We Can Work It Out (orig. The Beatles)

    (from Friends of Fall, 2011)





Cover Lay Down posts new coverfolk features and downloadable coversets twice a week, all in support the artists we love. Y’all come back now, y’hear?

Posted by boyhowdy at 1:24 pm | 1 comment
Labels: Crooked Still

Saturday, September 10, 2011

The Towers Fell, And Then We Were Silent:
A Remembrance, In Coverfolk and Prose





I was a media specialist the morning the towers began to fall: sole captain of a prep school video collection, and proprietor of the largest viewing space on campus. And so it was that the students came to me, one by one and together, by class and by cluster, as the word spread from teacher to teacher; so it was, indeed, that I ended up presiding over a grand experiment in media literacy, as the hour passed, and the cycle of not-news – that long hour of uncertain newscaster conjectures that accompanied the static, repetitive footage on every channel – took over the broadcast universe on that fated day.

As I noted last year, though we would not know until much later, we lost one of our own that morning: Chris Carstanjen, a sweet, geeky compatriot from the IT department, an almost-friend whose first drinking date we had scheduled for the following weekend, before he boarded that flight for California and never made it past downtown NYC. But what I remember most was the stunned silence of a hundred students or more, who in that moment, that sacred hour, were being born as the Terror Generation, though they would not know the deep societal scars which they would carry for a long, long time, if indeed they are still thoughtful enough to know now.

I remember, too, the Dean of Students and I deciding, finally, to turn off the screen, in the face of those somber and endless images and faces; to make a short and surely unmemorable speech about how the absence of news was not news, and commandeer the offices of librarians as impromptu counseling spaces for those who were scared, especially those who had parents and relatives in NYC and in the towers themselves, especially those who came from Muslim cultures and Muslim families, and seemed to understand, however vaguely, that they had suddenly become targets for other students’ confusion.

I remember feeling pride, for a moment, that I had managed to remember my calling in the face of disaster. And then I remember a long flash of shame, that I had somehow managed to make the day about me, thus cheapening the true scope of the disaster.

After that, I don’t remember anything at all. In my memory, it is as if turning off the television turned off the universe, too.

And ever since then, the world has been different. And I will always harbor a secret guilt, just like yours, that the world we rebuilt in the months and years that followed was not the same, even though we know, of course, that it could not have been.


Flash forward a decade, and here we are: one among a million paying tribute to the day the towers slowly fell. The world is faster, now, and more divided – two trends which spin into each other like two sides of a gyroscope, pulling at our psyches. I commute 40 minutes every morning to work with students for whom disaster is always personal and everpresent: homelessness, street violence, unemployment, the looming promise of dead-end futures. Some days it seems the only thing they own is their image, and who can fault them, then, for being so brash and sassy, peacocks with razor talons, angry at the world and taking it out on themselves without even realizing it.

I don’t know where to look for the the scars in this new generation, and I’m not sure I’d see them if I did. But their hardened hearts sadden me, sometimes.

There will be a moment of silence, come Monday’s morning announcements. And my students will speak into the air, loud against the voice of authority, unlistening and disconnected to their culture and each other, even as I am silent, and thinking of Chris, and of the moment I turned on the TV on the movie theater screen, and the smoking hole of culture flashed itself into my brain.

I can hear it, even now.


It’s been seven years, now, since I left the prep school; seven years since we lived side by side with the kids in the dormitories, and shared the pain and joys, the proms and punishments of night and day with the smart and well-bred, the resourced and the right-raised. But I often think of that day when I’m in my inner city classroom, working with the children of the downtrodden, the recent immigrants who don’t speak english, the hopeless – all categories of children whose pain is everpresent and real, and who would never have sat in silence, or even identified with the children of the towers.

Teachable moments are the lifeblood of the vocation, and I’m proud, I suppose, that we turned the TV off that day. But there is nothing so powerful as silence shared, as stunned communion. Nothing so powerful as a generation who grows up to see airport patdowns as normative rather than violation. Nothing so powerful, indeed, as the nexuses themselves, about which we try to say too much, and never truly find the words to speak of.

And so today we mourn the losses: of Chris, yes, and his airborne compatriots; of the parents and families of those who passed in fire and fall, impact and explosion – but also of the innocence of once-students now dispersed to the winds, some of them already struggling to raise children of their own. On one hand, they are and ever will be the children of privilege. On the other, they will always be the first generation, the youngest to truly understand what the world has become, without another, older sense of what it replaced.

To them, this new world is normal, for it is all they ever had.

Whether that makes them blessed or cursed is a matter for debate. And some days, I wish I knew, for it seems like it should matter very much indeed.

I miss them, those kids. I wonder about them, too. If I knew how to define okay in this instance, I’d ask them if they were, and if they remembered.

But I’m not sure I’d believe them, no matter what they said.


Posted by boyhowdy at 11:50 am | 6 comments
Labels: Uncategorized

Sunday, September 4, 2011

New Artists, Old Songs, Vol. XXII: Covers of and from
Amber Rubarth, James Vincent McMorrow, Big Daddy ‘O’ and more!

I’ve been busy, with storm clean-up and the start of a new school year taking up all my time and energy. But happily, a luxuriously long Labor Day weekend leaves room for a mid-morning run-down of the newest stuff to hit my ears. Here’s the best previously-unheard artist coverage that’s been making me smile as Summer spins to Fall; take a taste between the barbecues and parties, and – as always – don’t forget to follow links to purchase and support these new and still-rising artists if you like what you hear.


Pulling threads can lead to new discovery; such is our mandate and mission here at Cover Lay Down. But this week’s must-hear two-fer comes via an especially circuitous route, one which began with the snailmail delivery of Unraveled, the Kickstarter-funded debut album from Threeds, an avant-garde oboe trio based out of NYC.

As expected, Unraveled isn’t folk; iTunes auto-categorizes it as Jazz, and I suppose that’s about right, though the beatbox rhythms which drive several early tracks are delightful, and the album resonates well with my classically-trained spouse, too. But I’m quite glad I decided to spin it anyway, as among the multiple covers and originals on this tightly woven genre-smashing journey of an album are several tracks accompanied by guitar and voice – and though my favorite of these, Edge Of My Seat, is not technically a cover, but a new arrangement of an original song penned and performed here by Amber Rubarth, the Little Feat cover below, which features Rubarth and Paul Brill on vocals, is more representative of the eerily well-produced album, which also contains reed-driven covers of Charles Mingus, Radiohead, Bjork, The Doors, Michael Jackson, and more.

Not sure why I had never discovered Amber Rubarth; the small-town California-born, weary-yet-clear-voiced singer-songwriter didn’t take to the proverbial road until 2006, after a first career as a journeyman wood sculptor, but she’s been winning awards ever since for her original songs and lyrics, most recently as 2010 winner of the NPR/Mountain Stage NewSong contest. Her total output to date is about what you’d expect from a relatively short career – a couple of EPs, a trio of solo albums, two discs of collaborative indiepop work with fellow Brooklynite Alex Wong as The Paper Raincoat – but her newest album will include duet work with Jason Mraz, and a YouTube search reveals stellar, soulful covers of Dylan’s Just Like A Woman and more, causing me to add Rubarth to the ongoing wish list, to download her free Winter Sampler EP, and to feature her work here in the hopes of spreading the word to those who, like me, were in the dark until now.



Bearded Dubliner and indiefolk singer-songwriter James Vincent McMorrow is still making waves after a 2010 debut strong enough to catch the ear of bloggers from Heather to Peter; he’s often and easily compared to Bon Iver, James Blake, Antony and the Johnsons, and Devendra Banhardt – there’s a comparable delicacy in his settings, a similar tendency to record albums by himself in the woods, and the same whispery atmosphere in his falsetto – but there’s a depth of sensitivity here which just stuns the senses, transcending derivative accusation.

McMorrow’s first-ever US tour kicks off next weekend with shows on the upper East Coast. In the meantime, while you wait for him to come to your city, you can hear it in both these recent covers: a soft, sparse Willow Smith original recorded a while back for Today FM, and a brand new, utterly etherial piano-and-vox take on a one-time guilty pleasure from my adolescence which has just started making the inbox rounds, with bonus points for the song’s origin on new for-charity covers compilation Silver Lining, a student project from Dublin’s Sound Training Centre. Spread the word: this guy is getting big fast, and for good reason.



Acoustic bluesman Owen “Big Daddy “O”" Tufts comes as yet another mailbox recommendation, from a friend and fan who was happy to share; the Taj Mahal cover included in the email is gentle and warm, and though it was recorded and released a decade ago, having never heard of the artist gives us license to include his fine work in our ongoing series of coverage from new finds and releases. “O” is hard to track down; his website is offline was down when I wrote this entry, digital tracks are scarce outside of Amazon, and until I found more recent releases by searching cached websites in Google, as near as I could tell, the last record from this 30-year veteran of the Louisiana/Mississippi scene was a 2003 covers album containing tributes to everyone from Robert Johnson to James Taylor. But we’re here for discovery, folks, and this man is a hidden Delta gem; listen, buy, and pass it on.



Last but not least: an offhand remark from Timber & Steel (featured here last month) brought me to festival folk sing…, an ongoing project which solicits artists for live tribute sets at local Australian music festivals, and then turns the resultant recordings into crisp, well-curated collections that honor the performers as effectively as they celebrate the songwriters who have influenced the predominantly brit-folk influenced, local Australian folk and acoustic music scene. So far, there’s been but two records from this project – a tribute to Joni Mitchell, and another for Eric Bogle – but festival folk sing… is awesome in execution and concept, and seems to have sufficient legs for more; keep an eye on their website and facebook page for updates after you’ve checked out these local artists from the downunder scene for more threads to pull.



In other, more familiar artist news: Laura Viers is scheduled to release a new kidfolk album in November, and, according to the latest Signature Sounds newsletter, there’s some promising new album-length coverage from Peter Mulvey and Crooked Still on the horizon, too, with the former in process for March 2012, and the latter due to drop in October. Crooked Still takes on American Tune, the Beatles, and John Hartford? Yes, please. We’ll be back midweek for more, as always.

Posted by boyhowdy at 10:51 am | 4 comments
Labels: New Artists Old Songs

Sunday, August 28, 2011

Covered In Folk: Danny O’Keefe
(w/ Alison Krauss, Nickel Creek, Chris Smither, Chris Hillman & more)





A short post by Darius over at Star Maker Machine late last week rang a bell; I hadn’t realized that Danny O’Keefe had both penned and first performed The Road, which most of us know well through its coverage on Jackson Browne’s definitive album Running on Empty, but I did recognize his name from the songwriting credits for Well, Well, Well – a song often attributed to co-writer Bob Dylan alone, but first recorded by Maria Muldaur. Following the thread through the stacks, I found more than I bargained for: turns out there was a surprisingly large amount of coverage from the hugely undersung songwriting genius already sitting around on my harddrive. And so a feature blog post is born.

If I hadn’t noticed O’Keefe much as an artist, I suppose it can be excused: his biggest hit record came out the year before I was born; he’s produced but a single album in the last decade; most recently, he’s turned to poetry. But the Minnesota-bred, Spokane-based singer-songwriter has been writing, recording and performing for four decades, making millions off of eponymous 1972 sophomore album O’Keefe, which produced both The Road and the extraordinarily well-covered mega-hit Good Time Charlie’s Got The Blues.

O’Keefe’s record as a co-writer and originator of song speaks volumes to his reputation as a songwriter’s songwriter. Good Time Charlie has been taken on by numerous names in the music world, from Elvis Presley to Cab Calloway, from Willie Nelson to Waylon Jennings. And unsurprisingly, given his primary modality and the audience it brings in, the majority of covers of O’Keefe’s larger catalog touch broadly on the country, folk and bluegrass worlds.


Danny O’Keefe’s lyrics trend towards the sentimental, touching on themes of nature and our relationship to each other through it; his voice is soaring and sweet, and his original performance contains elements of country, folk, jazz, and more; not for nothing has he been so well covered by the softer side of folk, blues, and folkrock, with Judy Collins, Harry Manx, and of course Browne himself taking on the songbook at one time or another.

But thanks in part to his hybrid style and lyrical accessibility, O’Keefe has found his way into the hands and voices of a larger set of folk-oriented artists, too. We’re skipping the hardcore country, save for a mellow country-pop pair from Byrds co-founder Chris Hillman, but bluegrass is well represented here, with Tim O’Brien turning in a sweet take on Into The West, Nickel Creek taking on When You Come Back Down (originally performed by O’Brien, but co-written by O’Keefe) with soaring mando-led harmonies, and Alison Krauss lending her beautiful vocals to Dave Mallett co-write Never Got Off The Ground. And bluesfolk Chris Smither and Pat Wictor – the former doubly; the latter both with and without recent folk supergroup trio Brother Sun – also turn in their own versions of songs either recorded or written by this gentle lyricist with the surprisingly political side.

Here’s the good stuff, a chronology of coverage that starts way back in 1975. Listen to the set in its entirety, and the odds are good you’ll hear a familiar song or two. If you, too, never realized all these songs came from the same pen and voice, well, that’s the point of coverage.



Cover Lay Down shares new finds and retreads through coverfolks sets and feature-length musings twice a week or more without fail.

Posted by boyhowdy at 2:32 pm | 2 comments
Labels: Covered in Folk, Danny O'Keefe

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Tidbit Thursday: A Tribute to Hearth Music





Devon Léger, proprietor of Hearth Music, likes a particular kind of organic, neo-traditional folk and roots music, grounded deeply in the past yet sweet and honest enough for modern ears. He’s got great taste, too, and a knack for finding the good stuff. So the fact that the Seattle-based label which Devon runs with his family seems to have added me to their mailing list in recent months has made me happy, indeed.

It was Hearth that first made the introduction, via Nell Robinson’s most recent album, which we celebrated in July as a marvel of intimate storytelling peppered with the true grit voices of her family elders. From there, Devon and I got chatting; he recommended Lauren Sheehan’s brand new covers collection Rose City Ramble, which he’s “not promoting at all”, just because he thought I’d share his love for her wonderfully warm, gentle acoustic roots and blues covers, and pointed me to the Hearth Music blog, where he shares news of some pretty impressive roots artists that seem, too often, to be otherwise unsung. From there, I found the Listening Lounge, which features a holy host of retrofolk, bluegrass, and oldtimey artists, a treasure trove of discovery with files galore to sample and save.

Devon and co. have also impressed me to no end by picking up on other innovative musicians who I’ve raved about before, but had otherwise lost sight of. Today’s mail, for example, included the debut-as-a-duo album from tradfolk couple Pharis and Jason Romero, which finds the British Colombian folk reconstructionists and banjo-makers (previously touted here for their crystal-clear YouTube work) taking on a mixed set of traditionally sourced and original compositions to powerful effect, one that recalls the best of classic countryfolk guitar-led co-ed pairings from Johnny and June to Welch and Rawlings. The album is being paired with a new work by Romero producer Ivan Rosenberg and The Foggy Hogtown Boys, too, and it’s a great “vinyl-era” tradgrass romp.

And among other stellar artists performing in the Next Gen Folk Series which Hearth Music promotes out in Seattle, I find Nic Gareiss and Emma Beaton, a stunningly potent “transcendant traditional folk” duo who I actually did discover, before anyone, when I accidentally wandered into their first ever public performance together way back in the winter of 2009, and subsequently wrote that “if I ever had the time and guts to start producing musicians on my own, I’d start with Emma and Nic”.

And so I sing today in praise of the rarest of finds in the busy, increasingly fragmented world of music behind the scenes: a promotional agency that is perfectly genuine and personal; that presents exclusively hand-tooled, authentically crafted music in both live and recorded form; that sees the music they profit from as tied intimately to the music they love, and promotes it all, regardless of who it benefits; that sends physical media banded in brown paper, accompanied by playful yet tastefully classic postcard introductions to the artists, making the music they send a natural extension of the down-to-earth packaging experience, and vice versa.

In a world where so much spam fills the blogger’s inbox each day, such genuine thoughtfulness and prescience should not go unrewarded. So here’s some coverage from a few great artists recently touted, promoted, and/or hosted by this tiny yet growing promotion house. Check ‘em out, and then head over to Hearth Music to buy, book tickets, sample, and blogfollow.

  • Raina Rose w/ Rebecca Loebe: Mama You Been On My Mind (orig. Bob Dylan)



Cover Lay Down: on the neverending search for all the greatness in the universe. Sharing the best coverfolk we find in it with you since 2007.

Posted by boyhowdy at 9:37 pm | 1 comment
Labels: Elseblog, Tradfolk

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Shod Coverfolk, Redux:
On shoes and the end of summer

I’m flat out this week, preparing new classroom and new curriculum for another year in one of the toughest urban schools in Massachusetts, so I hope no one minds a relevant repost as we round the corner on the cusp of yet another school year. As with all our reposted features here at CLD, I’ve included a couple of new additions to the original setlist, too – so scroll down for covers of Black Sabbath, Sia, Paul Simon, Little Feat, Elvis Costello, Townes, Dylan, and more…





On the canvas of my mind, I paint the summerself as a towheaded Tom Sawyer, barefoot and fancy free. And though I cannot see into the infinite otherminds that share my world, it’s healthy, I think, to imagine that we all recreate our childhoods as such.

But there was little point in going unshod in my suburban childhood. A walk meant pavement, not sidewalks, and on the street, the threat of broken glass or ancient gravel shards was everpresent. Even our own backyard was sparse and prickly, a minefield of instep acorns; even the woodchips beneath the swingset were too splintery for toes untoughened by a lifetime of bare earth. For me, shoes and sneakers were the way of the world. And until recently, they always were.

Today, thanks to influence and instinct – evoked, in part, from the better memories of my farm-bred spouse – my children’s lives are different. Here in the woods, the girls run free, digging in the dirt with their heels, leaving muddy footprints across the flagstones as they scamper in for supper. As a consequence, their feet are tougher, the soles and pads thickening with age far earlier than mine ever did. Though I winced my way through the selfsame pathways, watching them run over the rough rocks and pebble beaches as we traveled up the Pacific Coast these last few weeks was validating, affirming the value of our choice to raise them without barriers between earth and flesh.

And such barefoot afternoons and weekends may continue for a while yet, though the rain and chill which arrived this week are a harbinger of colder months to come. But tonight summer ends, and the world of socks and laces rears its ugly head.

Which is to say: the elderchild starts school tomorrow morning, and my own classes will begin on Monday. The wee one will enter the world of public education this year, too, with Kindergarten a given in a world of second grade standardized tests. And school means shoes – for bare toes are outlawed in most schools these days, and for good reason: though flip flops are en vogue, the new world of liability and oversensitivity to hygiene make such summerwear moot in the classroom.

Time to put summer sandals back into storage for another year, then, and climb back into our sneakers and hard shoes, still scuffed from Spring, and dusty with the sifted sunbeams of a summer’s rest. We’ll buy new ones when the paychecks start coming in again, and perhaps by then the pride of shod and booted life will return to us. Too soon, the leaves will fall, and the snows begin, turning shoes to boots with high-top laces. In the meantime, here’s a soundtrack for our sorrow.


REPOST BONUS TRACKS, August 2011:

  • Mike Gennarini: Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes (orig. Paul Simon)
    (from Facebook, 2011)



Cover Lay Down publishes new coverfolk features and songsets each Wednesday and Sunday, and the occasional otherday.

Posted by boyhowdy at 5:22 pm | 0 comments
Labels: Uncategorized

Saturday, August 20, 2011

A Beautiful Mess: Housecleaning Coverfolk





I am not, by nature, a neat or well-organized person. Instead, I am cursed by ADHD, & natural tendencies towards entropy and laziness and procrastination, coupled with a pack-rat’s collecting mentality and a keen visual sense of where I left things which makes tidying up an exercise in planned futility.

And so, for the entirety of my adulthood, I have lived a life which, in its extreme moments, exhibits all the characteristics of relative squalor: clothes on every inch of the bedroom and bathroom floor, more dishes by the sink than in the cabinets, the entryway narrowed with cramped piles of detritus.

Even in the best of all possible worlds, with such tendencies matched by spouse and children, our home is constantly on the verge of being completely taken over by stuff. Halfhearted attempts to create and maintain a sense of order only lead to a life of abashed dishonesty and circuitousness. We are cautious about company, and treat irregular babysitting and housesitting visits as a prompt to reshuffle the various piles of clutter and randomalia which cover the dining room and living room coffeetable deeper into the house, where they will eventually fill and even block entry to entire rooms designed for work and play and sleep.

But every once in a while, we have no choice but to devote an entire day to actually cleaning up. Like now, for example, when the impending school year demands establishment of classroom and homework spaces for all of us, and organizing such spaces from scratch requires finding everything first. Also: I can’t find any of my work clothes.

And so we spend the afternoon working on the house. The entropic universe is pushed back a bit. And, in between sporadic bouts of pile-shifting and distracted paper-shuffling, I sit on the porch, away from the rising dust, and compile a wide-ranging smorgasbord of coversongs which – at least titularly – touch upon the cleaning process. Because I am, by nature and propensity, a beautiful mess. And music is ever my saving grace.


Posted by boyhowdy at 7:38 pm | 2 comments
Labels: Uncategorized

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