Category: (Re)Covered


The Year’s Best Coverfolk, Part 1:
Tribute Albums and Covers Collections

December 18th, 2011 — 12:08 pm





It’s coming on 2012, and all around us, bloggers tout their 2011 taste, jostling to be the best and first match for your own preferences, inviting debate over position in the ranks. And so, as we do every year as the calendar comes to a close, we struggle with the conceit of The Year In Review, surveying a year’s worth of posts, writing a never-ending series of half-hearted drafts, flinching every time we approach the task, yet feeling guilt every time we put it down.

My reluctance to pass judgement isn’t a cop-out. I’m a relatively fickle listener – my bias against live recordings, and their accompanying recording quality, is a constant thread here – but I’m also the sort of collector who takes more delight in discovery than digs. Our focus on the breadth of music often leans harder towards artist evolution than the next big thing because that’s the honest expression of how I think and hear. There’s no true hierarchy of artistic output in my disheveled aural infrastructure, just a spectrum of successes and partial successes. And how does one compare the sublime to the sentimental? The transformation to the faithful revisioning? The sparse to the layered? Coverage comes in as many flavors and subtypes, and each one can be done well.

And so, as a general policy, I avow the critical lens; our mandate, as we see it, is to tout and expose. While others rank and score, we celebrate and share that which we love as we find it, believing that if it weren’t among the best things you’d hear all year, it wasn’t worth posting in the first place. In that sense, the entirety of our year’s blogging is itself our recommendations list. To winnow it down feels, on the one hand, like a dismissal of that joy we found in any of it when we found it.


And yet there is method in the madness of the recovery of the recent in the name of hierarchical organization. Just considering a Best Of post provides a useful and productive opportunity to revisit the archives. And as I noted in November in a casual roundup of the year’s Tributes and Cover Compilations, a generous and precious handful of coverfolk EPs and covers albums have emerged this year; to come back to them before they fade from the memory has its uses, too.

More significantly, while I abhor the very idea of ranking songs, album-length collections seem easier to rate. Hitting the mark singly, in three minutes or so of song, is itself a hard standard; providing a rich, nuanced journey through multiple tracks without stumbling is nigh impossible. Self-selection becomes the primary criteria, then: in those very rare cases where an entire album of covers comes to us as a success, the end result is well worth repeating at year’s end. And here, the successes are so few and far between, we can count on our fingers the albums which deserve not just our respect, but our awe and appreciation, and our last dollars.

So before we get to the year’s best one-off covers playlist later in the week, here’s a quick rundown of some favorite all-covers albums and EPs from 2011, arranged into categories much like those which we would use were we in the habit of ranking. Those looking for folk music through coverage should stay on the line, as we’ll follow it with a compendium of “best” single-shot tracks from the year; those looking for gift-giving recommendations for coverlovers, however, are heavily encouraged to consider this a shopping list with its own soundtrack.

The Year’s Best Tribute Album (multiple artists): Fast Folk Jack Hardy Tribute

Though we celebrate those cross-genre releases which contain folk and acoustic interpretations in the mix throughout the year, as a folkblog, we celebrate most those tributes which are quintessentially folk, and nothing else. As such, many amazing tributes, from Herohill’s Gordon Lightfoot spectacular to Sufjan Stevens indie tribute Seven Swans Revisited, and from this month’s American Laundromat Smiths tribute and last month’s Minnesota artists’ tribute to Vic Chesnutt to this Spring’s Alt-Country tribute to the Rolling Stones, are unfortunately ineligible for our official recognition, despite strong folk tracks aplenty, and high recommendations for broad-minded coverlovers.

Of these, Seven Swans and the Smiths tribute, surprisingly enough, are perhaps the folkiest, and the most consistent; we’ll have tunes from their majesty in our midweek “Best Coverfolk Songs of 2011″ entry, to be sure. I still have high hopes for two-disc Guy Clark tribute This One’s For Him, which may or may not have actually dropped at this point; it’s was supposedly coming in November, but it’s already out of print at Amazon, and I can’t find a digital version anywhere; please let me know if you’ve found a copy.

But if we had to pick just one – a desert island disc – from this year’s crop, and if we have to stick to folk alone, we’d select an album that technically hasn’t even been released yet: the Jack Hardy two-disc tribute, recorded for ultimate release through the Smithsonian’s Fast Folk catalog but leaked by its producer and engineer Mark Dann on a limited basis as a way to get the music out to those fans who truly appreciated the songwriting genius and often-cranky leadership of Hardy, who led folk sessions in his NYC apartment for decades, and founded Fast Folk itself, sparking the Greenwich Village revival of the eighties which so defines today’s greying folkscene. Where other albums pitch and wane against a measure of interpretive grace, here, any imperfections are part and parcel of the album’s success, in fitting tribute to a folksinger who measured songcraft almost exclusively by its authenticity and storyline, not its sound.

Second place honors go to Rounder Records’ Nod to Bob 2, which has an overwhelming number of especially strong tracks alongside some also-rans, and which I kept on rotation in the car for a record-breaking three months running, thanks in no small part to the stunning live take on What Good Am I from The Pines which kicks off the album.



The Year’s Best Tribute Album (single artist): Thea Gilmore, John Wesley Harding

Kris Delmhorst’s Cars tribute, Thea Gilmore’s Dylan tribute, Laura Cantrell’s swinging countryfolk tribute to Kitty Wells – as I’ve said before, it was a great year for artists playing full-length tribute to their favorite artist or album, a sub-category which is often so challenging to take on that most years produce but one or two albums of its ilk, good or bad. But though Delmhorst’s softer, more poignant cuts have remained in my ears, and Cantrell’s own tribute, while excellent, runs too close to country for my tastes, for full-album merit, nothing beats Gilmore’s Dylan: the set runs broad, but consistent and sweet even in its hardest folkrock moments.



The Year’s Best Tribute EP: Eef Barzelay, Black Tin Rocket / Clem Snide’s Journey (tie)

Eef Barzelay’s Black Tin Rocket was barely a blip on the radar when it first came out – there’s almost nothing about it on the blogs, and it’s not like the Transmissionary Six, whose songs the Clem Snide founder takes on in this 6-song EP, are a household name. But the longer I listen to this album, the more I find myself drowning in the lyrics and ragged, heartfelt solo interpretations. And in the end, the power of coverage is laid bare twofold through this small release, with just voice and guitar digging deep into the psyche, providing an entry into the work of the obscure duo. And so Barzelay ties with himself, urging a two-fer purchase alongside his Journey covers album. Most notable runner-up in this category: Ralph McTell’s Dylan tribute EP, which is a perfect meld of the quintessential McTell circa Streets of London and six well-chosen cuts from, you know, the best-known songbook in all of folkdom.



The Year’s Best Covers Album: Holly Figueroa O’Reilly, One

Plenty of contenders in this category this year. But as noted last month, top honors here go to Holly Figueroa O’Reilly, whose otherwise unnoted and unreviewed January 2011 digital-only release One hits the covers album trifecta: perfectly raw and delicate interpretations, stunningly successful selection of pop originals, and a heartwrenchingly poignant backstory.

Close seconds go to Marissa Nadler’s aching dreampop-slash-britfolk Covers II, Sara Lov’s I Already Love You, which we’ve come back to several times recently for its Smiths covers, the folkpop debut from 16 year old indie sensation Birdy (who gets major bonus points for releasing a self-titled covers album as a debut), and Reid Jamieson’s wonderful, gentle tribute to the songs of 1969, recorded and released in March in honor of his wife’s birthday. Other runners up include Duncan Sheik’s Covers album, which ran poppy but contains some real gems, June Tabor and Oysterband’s mostly-traditional second collaboration Ragged Kingdom, which hit late and off the radar but deserves our awe and support, and Eef Barzelay’s Fan Chosen Covers album, generated as a side-effect of his 2011 Journey covers kickstarter project (and now up to 20 tracks).



The Year’s Best Covers EP: Chamberlin, Cabin Covers

I had a handful of favorites here, including Chris Smither’s late-year rock ‘n roll tribute, and the Watson Twins’ Night Covers. But Chamberlin’s Cabin Covers EP, a surprise contender from Cover Me’s well-curated Best of 2011 lists, has caught my heart for a last-minute win. The album, which runs ragged and indie and beautifully reflective of its isolated, flood-torn rural recording session setting, totally passed me by before now, but it’s out of the gate like a racehorse, a hipster’s folk album with warm yet delicate covers of Vampire Weekend, Foster The People’s Pumped Up Kicks, and more, and all proceeds go to support VT communities affected by Hurricane Irene. We almost had a late entry with the brand-new Okkervil River covers EP, too; ultimately, it went too alt-country to be truly eligible, but it’s still well worth mention.



The Year’s Best Covers Rerelease/Reissue: Various Artists, They Will Have Their Way: The Songs of Tim and Neil Finn

A new category, as covers albums don’t generally get reissued (and digital distribution makes moot the conceit of issuance as incidence, anyway). But I just can’t resist the two-CD set They Will Have Their Way, which combines two previously-released single-gender Tim and Neil Finn tribute albums into one double-length set in honor of this year’s mixed-bag downunder tribute tour. The all-female and all-male Australian singer-songwriter tributes, originally from 2005 and 2010, remain available separately, but the combined power of these two albums is more than doubled, cementing the strong songwriting legacy of the Brothers Finn, who made their name in Split Enz and Crowded House.




The Year’s Best Kidfolk Covers Album: Laura Viers, Tumble Bee

In a year where the kindie movement has continued to turn towards both original compositions and a harder edge, Laura Viers’ tradfolk kindie record Tumble Bee is a hands-down winner here, mostly because the other choices yaw past the line between folk and other genres. Of those, the Tom T. Hall tribute remains worth your time if your kids and family like a good sunny acoustic country set.



The Year’s Best Kidfolk Covers EP: Maiden Radio, Lullabies

Kids EPs are rare, indeed. But we’d create a new category just for Julia Purcell, Cheyenne Marie Mize, and Joan Shelley, the Louisville ladies of Maiden Radio, a harmonizing folk trio whose 2011 8-track Lullabies is gentle and sweet enough for kids in dreamland and for moms and dads after bedtime, too. Recorded for the young daughter of one of their own, released on Daniel Martin Moore’s new label Ol Kentuck, its traditional folk songs snuggle up against the timelessness of tracks like Gillian Welch’s Dear Someone, each one a tiny two-minute gem. Not bad for a sophomore effort.



The Year’s Best Tradfolk Album: Chris Thile and Michael Daves, Sleep With One Eye Open

Laura Viers almost won this category, too – after all, as Grammy sweeps tell us, there’s nothing restricting a cross-over album from taking first honors in any and all of the arenas it covers. But Sleep With One Eye Open, the amazing bluegrass standards album from Michael Daves and Chris Thile, which we blogged about after Daves mentioned it early in the game at the Joe Val festival in February, edges it out by a nose. Second place goes to Daniel Martin Moore’s dreamfolk In The Cool Of The Day, which covers the gospel spiritual canon in lullaby mode, and exquisitely so. And if it’s older, unsourced tradfolk you prefer, then there’s the dark horse candidate: the organic, delightfully homespun duo album from Thomas Fox, which we featured back in summer – an album recorded as soundtrack for a local theater production of Our Town, and named after the Thornton Wilder play itself. Gentle, endearingly ragged americana, gritty and mild.



The Year’s Best Mostly-Covers Album: Red Molly / Pharis and Jason Romero / Nell Robinson (3-way tie)

A number of artists released albums this year which feature coverage heavily, yet sprinkle originals liberally in the mix. Red Molly’s newest, for example, runs roughly 50% each way; Molly Vintner original tearjerker Hold It All is easily the most potent song in the set, but overall, their covers of Gillian Welch, Dolly Parton, Buddy and Julie Miller, Mark Erelli, and a few traditional appalachian tunes are the album’s centerpiece and strength. A Passing Glimpse, the debut album from married banjomakers and tradfolk duo Pharis and Jason Romero, may include a number of originals, but they sound just as ancient – and come across just as stunningly sparse and tender – as the tradfolk and gospel covers which give the album its potency, and the players their credibility. Similarly, Nell Robinson’s On The Brooklyn Road paints the past and present in perfect sepia tones, though it has less coverage still. We’ll call this one a three way tie, with runner-up honors to Spuyten Duyvil’s rootsy crowd-driven New Amsterdam, and save Nell’s best track for our upcoming “Best Songs” feature.



Want a GREAT set of music from 2011? Download our entire set as a zip file:

And stay tuned later this week for Part 2 of our series, in which we compile a host of the year’s best singletons and b-sides from the worlds of YouTube, Soundcloud, album cuts, and more!



Cover Lay Down thrives throughout the year thanks to the support of artists, labels, promoters, and YOU. So do your part: listen, love, spread the word, and above all, purchase the music, the better to keep it alive.

And if, in the end, you’ve got goodwill to spare, and want to help keep the music flowing? Please, consider a year’ end contribution to Cover Lay Down. All gifts will go directly to bandwidth and server costs; all giftees will receive undying praise, and an exclusive download code for a special gift EP-length set of favorite 2011 Holiday Covers otherwise unblogged.

Thanks, folks. May your days be merry and bright.

1 comment » | (Re)Covered, Compilations & Tribute Albums

(Re)Covered, Vol XXI: the Back On The Grid edition
(covers of and from Vic Chesnutt, Big Star, Folk Uke, Red Molly, & In My Life)

November 7th, 2011 — 04:54 pm

It’s been a weird year here in tiny rural Monson, MA, and it keeps getting weirder: after a devastating tornado in June, and a hurricane and flood in August, last week’s freak snowstorm hit us hard indeed, felling thousands of trees across the vast landscape, and knocking out power and phone lines for the vast majority of residents. To help out, once again, I’ll be re-gifting 40% of all donations to Cover Lay Down from now until the end of the month to support local rebuilding efforts – a gift sorely needed, with winter nigh upon us, and scores of local families still living in trailers while they rebuild their homes and lives after this unprecedented trifecta of natural disasters.

As for me: after 8 days without heat, running water, stereo system and internet, I’m itching to get back into the fold, and this towering backlog of albums and singles is here to help. So let’s get right back to the music after a week of radio silence with a long-overdue nod to those feature subjects which just keep coming back – a return to our regular (Re)Covered feature series, in which we take on new releases and discoveries which add value to previously-posted explorations of the artists and songs we love.

A new release from local fave acoustic folkroots trio Red Molly is always welcome, especially given how effectively their sound has matured with the addition of new member Molly Venter’s achingly adept voice. But I’m kicking myself for not making the connection to last month’s feature subject sooner, given that their new record Light in the Sky, released at the beginning of October and still receiving strong support from the Americana and folk charts, has not one but two Mark Erelli covers, each one a delight of harmonies and folkgrass stringplay, with the banjo, dobro, and guitar eminently equal to the heavenly three-part vocals which have so typified the Red Molly sound since their original inception around the folk festival campfire.

As always, the album offers a predominance of coverage, with a small handful of originals from the ladies interspersed into the mix; as always, the whole run is smooth and heartful, channeling the full range of countryfolk emotion, from angst and anger to hope and heaven, with equal aplomb. But if you’re a regular reader of Cover Lay Down, I suspect I’m preaching to the choir. And if you’re not yet a fan of these ladies after all our past coverage – from our original 2007 feature to this summer’s amazing take on Jack Hardy’s songbook – this pair of covers from the new release should make it clear: you’re long overdue for your own date with heaven.



This month’s charity tribute to Vic Chesnutt from Minnesota-based nonprofit Rock The Cause marks the second such tribute since his December 2009 passing, and at least his third overall, if we count the Sweet Relief album recorded live for his benefit over a decade before his passage. But while Cowboy Junkies’ recent full-album tribute Demons recasts the works of this crippled singer-songwriter in fairly predictable (albeit no less successful) washes of alt-country sound, Minnesota Remembers Vic Chesnutt, which drops tomorrow, is diverse and sweet and surprisingly consistent in its success, running the gamut from alt to indie to rock-solid rock, while retaining throughout the tender-yet-grounded lyrical sensibility of Chesnutt’s originals.

Featuring 17 tracks from a host of name-brand players – among them Haley Bonar’s amazingly gentle take on Chesnutt’s patriarchal-viewed Pinocchio story, and an utterly stunning, aptly broken solo take on Rabbit Box from Charlie Parr which I’m holding back to tempt purchase, the better to benefit the music-related causes which Rock The Cause supports – the album is sure to please both fans and newcomers; the below singles have both been heard elsewhere, but they’re well worth repeating.


Our Folk Family Friday Feature on the Guthrie clan, posted last November, cited Arlo’s daughter Cathy and her performing partner Amy Nelson (daughter of Willie) as key members of the newest generation of performing family members, noting that “the duo, who call themselves Folk Uke, are a bit more punk and a lot more obscene than the rest of their kin, but the music is fine indeed, and firmly grounded in the folk tradition.” Now, six years after their self-titled debut dropped, Folk Uke arrives again with their sophomore release, entitled Reincarnation, on November 22, and we’re happy to call it a tour de force of folk, with special guest appearances from both famous fathers, from producer and multi-instrumentalist Abe Guthrie, and from second-gen singer-songwriter Shooter Jennings to boot.

All family connections aside, the duo are excellent singer-songwriters, and indeed, it’s Cathy and Amy who make this record special, grounding it in their signature gentle, airy strum styles and light, whimsical vocals, providing a delicacy that belies their raw, earthy, almost anti-folk sensibility and lyrical truth. There’s love in here, for sure, but it’s a love rich in secular realism, making for an apt addition to the Guthrie/Nelson family legacies, and – from their sparse opening cover of a Harry Nilsson song originally performed by Shelley Duvall as Olive Oyl in the 1980 film Popeye, to the palette of uke, bass, and guitar which tinkle and strum under the clear vocals throughout – a strong, sweet, eminently listenable album in its own right.


It was hard to justify running down the power on the iPad while the lights were out, but I made an exception for this amazing Beatles cover several times over. Here’s why: while Brooklynite Bess Rogers, whose new album Out Of The Ocean is buzzworthy enough to have made her the featured ‘Single Of The Week’ artist on iTunes/Japan last week, generally goes for indiepop production with organic, acoustic undertones – much like Ingrid Michaelson, for whom Bess tours as lead guitarist and back-up singer – her take on In My Life, which was originally released as a single this August to little fanfare, is positively etherial, stark and lovely in all the right places, with the uke and harpsichord keys, the layered vocals, and a delightfully clicking beat counterpoint containing all the warmth of the perfect late summer evening.

Interesting, how a song we featured this summer in multiple versions as part of our commemorative post-tornado series came back to haunt me once again in the midst of yet another weather-related disaster. Even in the freezing dark, this one kept me warm and smiling.

For bonus points, a quick search of the universe reveals several strong albums already under Bess’ belt, plus an equally delicate, warm take on The Beach Boys’ Little Saint Nick from a 2010 all-covers NYC artists’ benefit for the nonprofit urban kids writing collaborative organization 826NYC – our very first Christmas cover of the season – that shimmers with firelight, setting the bar high, indeed.



Finally: I only watch one TV show regularly, and I watch it on Hulu, giving me an eight day delay for discovery on this amazingly atmospheric take on Big Star classic The Ballad of El Goodo from up and coming guy/girl folkpop duo The Wellspring. The poignancy may not characterize all their work – the stream on their page which touts their newest EP runs up to full throttle, as befits a band being produced by the same folks that brought you other indie folkpop icons (like Ingrid Michaelson, again, et. al.) – but it certainly brought just the right tone to the final moments of yet another heartbreaking episode of the best damn hospital drama around. And the ringing fullness of its sound pairs perfectly with Evan Dando’s ragged, sparse alternate cover, which we last shared way back in March 2010, when Big Star founder and patron saint Alex Chilton passed on into the big band in the sky.



Like what you hear? Then stay tuned, ’cause Cover Lay Down is back in business with more to come! We’ll return later this week and next for more new releases and folk features, including a look at the life and songs of cowboy countryfolk outlaw Guy Clark.

2 comments » | (Re)Covered, Red Molly, Tribute Albums

(Re)Covered, vol. XX: more covers of and from
Sam Billen, The Farewell Drifters, Rufus Wainwright, Dylan & more!

June 11th, 2011 — 08:54 pm

Our tendency towards revisiting posts gone by through the lens of new releases and projects is especially apropos this weekend, given the continued recovery efforts in our little tornado-ravaged town.   While the rest of us sift through the rubble, let’s sift through the archives, taking account of some new and noteworthy works from artists featured previously here on Cover Lay Down. 


We first featured young started-out-bluegrass band the Farewell Drifters on the release of the hook-heavy Yellow Tag Mondays, their 2010 release; back then, they were already leaning towards a broader stew of Americana and indie roots music, and you could hear both their influences and their growing trend towards folkrock in the Beatles covers we posted, which had been recorded a year apart from each other.

Today, in a (Re)covered two-fer, the Drifters bring us a song that we visited through other coverage way back on the tenth anniversary of Sept. 11, and like the rest of their newest album, it’s another step towards something rich and subtly different, both more mainstream and more original in sound and sensibility, couched in deeply layered pop-rock with just a hint of ‘grass, though relatively true to the original in most other ways. The cover – a version of Simon and Garfunkel’s Only Living Boy In New York – is nowhere near as sweet or somber as the Shawn Colvin cover that so deeply speaks to my soul, but these days, being in the thick of the disaster, I need hope more than I need sadness, and this bonus track from Echo Boom, released just last week, provides just the trick, making for some fine summer soundtrack material.

  • Farewell Drifters: Only Living Boy In New York (orig. Simon and Garfunkel)

    (from Echo Boom, 2011)

Bonus Tracks:



Sam Billen is a stand-up, sensitive indie musician and producer who has shown up on Cover Lay Down several times, both for his several holiday projects and for REMOVERs, the electrofolk remix and coverage project which he has been building and posting – in public and entirely for free – for over a year as he adjusts to the home studio joys of new fatherhood. He’s long been on the top of our watchlist, in part because of the sheer authenticity of both his voice and the evident care and craftsmanship with which he produces his material, and in part because, unlike most musicians, he comes off as perfectly sincere, even humble in both his work and his occasional emails announcing new developments in that work.

But Sam gets major kudos for reaching out this time around – because in the midst of the chaos we’ve experienced since the tornado hit our tiny town, it was genuinely touching to receive an email that contained both a full paragraph reaching out to us in the context of that disaster, thanking us for our reporting of it and sending hope that we are all okay out here, and a link to the newest songs which Sam, his brother, and his father have taken on: a set of loving living-room covers of predominantly countrypop hits, just three guitars and voices taking on Neil Young and others, as honest as a campfire circle among family. Here’s two of my favorites, with encouragement to check out the rest of ‘em over at The Billen Brothers’ YouTube channel – plus an older bonus from the now-completed REMOVERs project.

  • The Billen Brothers: Ventura Highway (orig. America)


  • The Billen Brothers: I Will (orig. The Beatles)




Our 2007 feature on the Wainwright/McGarrigle Family was the very first of our Folk Family features; since then, we’ve revisited the extended clan multiple times, making note of Loudon’s Charlie Poole tribute, youngest daughter Lucy Wainwright Roche‘s delightful work as a solo singer-songwriter, and Kate McGarrigle’s passing last winter after a long struggle with cancer. Now, we return once more to report on a new work from what is perhaps the least “folk” of the modern Wainwright clan: Rufus, who has made a name for himself in movie soundtracks and pop circles as a balladeer, forging far beyond the folk roots which mother Kate and father Loudon set before him.

To be fair, Rufus has crossover appeal to folk audiences; as such, we’ve covered him here, too. But though the new Rufus box set House of Rufus – 19 full-length discs, both CDs and DVDs, a relatively complete compendium of demos, in-studio rarities, side projects, soundtrack cuts, live material, and 6 studio albums – primarily focuses on his work as a nuanced pop crooner (including the entirety of his infamous Carnegie Hall Judy Garland tribute), the sheer breadth is wide enough by far to be well worth collecting, including a vast and varied compendium of his collaborative work with family members and friends, many of which we’ve celebrated here before, and a few of which (most notably, a delicious duet on Richard Thompson’s Down Where The Drunkards Roll performed with his father which, unfortunately, I’ve been asked not to release too early) are otherwise entirely unavailable. Here’s a couple other favorites from the box and beyond, just to show the diversity potential in such a sweeping set of coverage.



Finally: social and professional pressures caused us to skip past two Bob Dylan tributes as his birthday came and went towards the end of May; recent tornado events in our local area kept us from coming back until now. But the pair is worth noting, even now, in part because both feature well-known, long-standing artists taking on the Dylan canon with aplomb.

First and foremost, Ralph “Streets of London” McTell released an EP-length set of Dylan covers two weeks ago, and though nobody seems to have noticed except astute Aussie folkwatchers Timber and Steel, the set is absolutely worth finding and purchasing. Somewhat akin in tone and timbre to the late Johnny Cash’s reinterpretation of the work of others late in his own life, yet imbued with McTell’s distinctive britfolk tones and fingerpicking, the six songs here are darkened with age, and deep with the pensive eye and mind of a fellow folksinger who has seen his share of fame, which is to say: as T&S notes, McTell’s Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright sounds like the song was written for him. Check out the full tribute here.

Second and no less noteworthy, Red House Records took advantage of Dylan’s 70th to release a decade-later follow-up to their defining Dylan folk tribute. Like the “original”, A Nod To Bob 2, the second release in this series, stars a set of recognizable folk artists taking on the canon – though notably, this time around, a few cuts can be found elsewhere, such as Danny Schmidt’s Buckets of Rain, or Eliza Gilkyson’s Jokerman, and some of these artists, such as John Gorka, are no longer in the prime of their careers, and their voices show it. Still, the roster here is sound, and the interpretations well-selected, with deeper cuts than the last round, and standouts all around, including a wonderful wail from the Jimmy LaFave, the Texan master of Dylan troubadour coverage, a delightfully bouncy, bluesy take from Hot Tuna, a truly sultry country blues from Pieta Brown, and Meg Hutchinson’s wonderful, echoing piano-driven reinvention of rarity Born In Time – the latter pair of which we could not help but pass along.




While we’re all about the artists here, and our server costs continue to rise as our popularity continues to grow, here at Cover Lay Down, we believe in passing it forward. So although we encourage you to check out and purchase albums by all artists featured here before moving on, Cover Lay Down is pledging 40% of all donations given between now and June 30th to rebuilding our local community after the recent tornado cut a swath through the hills and into our downtown area, destroying our Town Offices and leaving well over 100 people homeless. Won’t you consider helping out? Click here to donate.

15 comments » | (Re)Covered, Bob Dylan, Rufus Wainwright, Sam Billen, The Farewell Drifters

Dylan, Etc.: More covers of and from
Sarah Jarosz, Lavinia Ross, Lisa Hannigan, Anna Vogelzang & more!

May 16th, 2011 — 07:46 pm

There’s a lot of Dylan in the air this month – see, for example, both our recent feature on Thea Gilmore’s John Wesley Harding, released in honor of the seminal singer-songwriter’s 70th birthday next week, and last weekend’s house concert preview for our upcoming show with Anthony Da Costa, who many have compared to Dylan himself. But as we’ve noted several times here at Cover Lay Down, the Bob Dylan canon is far too vast to justify a single feature. So here’s an omnibus of a different sort: five vastly different new and newly-found takes on Dylan, plus more from the mailbox and beyond.


We’re huge fans of the Sugar Hill Records catalog here at Cover Lay Down. But this two solid releases this month have raised the bar even higher for the best little bluegrass label in the business: Follow Me Down, a stunningly powerful sophomore album from festival circuit fave and local college student Sarah Jarosz, and a strong solo record from Tara Nevins, better known as the sole female voice behind roots rockers and folk festival faves Donna The Buffalo.

Cover Me already hit the ground running last week with Sarah’s Radiohead cover, which features her singing alongside the Punch Brothers, but as a nod of the head towards our ongoing support of her burgeoning career on the border of bluegrass and indiepop – the girl turns twenty next week, for goodness sake – we’ve been given exclusive first-stream rights for Jarosz’ cover of Dylan’s Ring Them Bells, and it’s a masterful take, warm and sweet and aching, with rich production, a pitch-perfect tonality, and subtle harmonies by Vince Gill. Meanwhile, Nevins takes on Van Morrison amidst a spate of deep, mystical originals, and it fits in just fine with her rootsy sensibility. Both albums come highly recommended; head over to Sugar Hill to order.

  • Sarah Jarosz: Ring Them Bells (orig. Bob Dylan)




Our feature on the songbook of Kate Wolf last summer found us wandering North through Kate’s own hills of California, and on upstream to Oregon. Now, in the mail, comes Keepsake, the sole solo album from Lavinia Ross, Oregonian farm-owner and musician whose music is as earthy and honest and organic as her produce. The album includes three Kate Wolf covers, a take on James Taylor’s Millworker, several originals, and a rock-solid interpretation of Dylan’s Tomorrow is a Long Time, recorded with her husband, singer-songwriter Rick Ross, and the whole thing is light and gentle as it comes. Here’s a pair to get you started.


We keep a close eye on little-lo-fi-UK-label-that-could Where It’s At Is Where You Are; though their catalog yaws wide, their taste for covers is insatiable, as we noted way back in March of 2009 upon the release of their gigantic Springsteen tribute, and again over the holiday season, and their stable includes a number of quite wonderful otherwise-unknowns emerging on and about the folkworld. This month’s news takes note of The Lobster Boat, the newest release from Howard Hughes of French band Coming Soon and David Tattersall of The Wave Pictures, whose work together sounds a bit like a mostly-acoustic folk-rock band whose members grew up listening to the Kinks, Belle and Sebastian, and the Violent Femmes; if the below bonus b-side and the title track streaming on their homepage are any indication, this one is well worth the pounds.

  • Howard Hughes and David Tattersall: The Locusts Sang (orig. Bob Dylan)



Elseblog, the collaborative at covers tumblr Copy Cats shared this 2009 bell-driven Lisa Hannigan cover of Just Like Tom Thumb Blues a few weeks ago, but it finally caught my ear – a sharp shock amidst a long slog – as I was digging through the feedreader, trying to catch up after two weeks of being out of the loop. Not sure if it’s folk, per se, but we’ve celebrated Hannigan’s beautifully torn voice here before, and the sparse instrumentation and stark pub setting are utterly delightful to this folk listener’s ears.



Finally, since we were trending Dylanesque this week, I headed over to YouTube and did a quick search, just to see what would pop up, hoping to find the perfect coda. Sure enough: amidst the grungy bedroom amateurs, indie-folk banjo-player Anna Vogelzang‘s just-recorded after-midnight cover of Don’t Think Twice comes off road-weary and delicate, providing the perfect excuse to finally tout this long-admired up-and-comer. The ex-Dresden Dolls bandmember’s upcoming new album will feature Anthony Da Costa (thus bringing this entry full circle), and members of Dresden Dolls and Righteous Babe, among others; check out Anna Vogelzang’s YouTube channel for more, more, more from this amazing post-punk singer-songwriter.

Bonus Track:



Cover Lay Down posts new coverfolk features and themed songsets twice weekly.

44 comments » | (Re)Covered, Anna Vogelzang, Bob Dylan, Sarah Jarosz

(Re)Covered, Vol. XIX: More coverfolk of and from
Stevie Wonder, Sara Lov, Edie Carey, The Water Is Wide & more!

March 12th, 2011 — 06:26 pm





Early this week, my trusty, relatively rusty laptop went kaput, leaving me stranded with but an iPad to access the universe. With 50,000 songs and their library locked in limbo, and the iPad unable to load the full WordPress interface, I was in no position to let folks know what was happening behind the scenes; the resulting radio silence through what is usually a midweek blog feature deadline was frustrating, and I apologize for leaving regular visitors hanging on the line.

Today is a recovered day in more ways than one, then: not only is the world outside melting down to Spring, revealing last year’s leaves still unraked across the slowly surfacing front lawn, but I am once again able to blog with impunity. And for this, I owe much thanks to the fine folks at Apple, who – over the course of a very stressful week – imported every last file and bookmark from the old, inoperable machine into a new one, and proudly presented me this morning with a sleek 2011 MacBook Pro that feels delightfully new under my fingertips, yet on the screen looks and behaves like an old friend, down to its interface and organizational infrastructure.

And so here we are, grateful and relieved, with credit card maxed out but once again able to step wholeheartedly into the blogging fray. And given the context, it’s a perfect time to explore the ways in which the past echoes through the present through another edition of our popular (Re)Covered series, featuring new and newly-discovered songs that revealed themselves just a little too late to make it into the original posts where they rightfully belonged.

Sara Lov runs a little pop for the trad set, but people seemed to appreciate her joyful way with the songs she clearly loves, and we loved her playful, well-crafted covers of Beck’s Timebomb and Arcade Fire’s My Body Is A Cage enough to feature her prominently in the midst of our New Artists, Old Songs Week way back in 2008. So it’s especially exciting to note that her mid-February release, I Already Love You, is a full-bore covers album, one that pays tribute to an especially broad set of influences from Frank Sinatra and The Thompson Twins to others, like Ron Sexsmith, The Smiths, and Conor Oberst, more commonly cited among the indiepop world.

The production here is especially inspired, akin to the best settings and soundscapes of Aimee Mann or Rosie Thomas. Sara’s Sexsmith cover contains just enough of both Sexsmith’s signature slippery vocal mannerisms and the signature twang of the original guitar to ring familiar without sounding derivative; her Vasti Bunyan waltz, a delicate, lazy revelation, benefits greatly from its strings and piano; her take on Magnetic Fields classic Papa Was A Rodeo has AAA Radioplay in every perfect downbeat. But in the end, it is Sara’s voice, sweet and warm and ever so slightly rasped, which makes these songs ring out loud and true. Check out these tracks, and then – once you’ve heard their value, and extrapolated accordingly – head over to Sara’s website to pick up the whole thing for a donation of your choice.

Bonus Tracks, since they’re long gone otherwise:



I tend to do as much research as I can when presenting new discoveries, the better to provide thorough context for you to embrace new artists, as our mandate encourages. But though my Google Fu is highly honed, thanks to vocationally-relevant post-graduate coursework in webbed research methods, our ability to be comprehensive in such introductions can be stymied by multiple factors, from the tendency of older works to fall out of print to the modern digital dilemma which trades speed and ease of access for the loss of liner notes which might aid us in matching names to voices in the works of others.

New discoveries from two recently celebrated folk artists provide ample evidence for the effects of these limitations, and for why we depend on you to fill the gaps in our knowledge. We owe our first find to Lucas Miré, a fine singer-songwriter in his own right who we featured way back in 2009, who followed up on last weekend’s feature on Edie Carey by sending along this amazing cut from It’s Gonna Be Great, Carey’s 2008 cover-heavy out-of-print collaboration with Canadian singer-songwriter Rose Cousins (often featured here for her own collaborative work with Boston singer-songwriter Rose Polenzani), along with notice that he was recently privileged to host Carey in the studio to accompany him on one of his own recordings, leaving us eager to hear more when the time is ripe. And the second? Turns out it was actually already in my archives – but it took notice from a reader to realize that not only does recently celebrated NY-based bluegrass musician Michael Daves tour with Tony Trischka, he also lends his highly trained, powerfully barbaric tenor yawp voice to several tunes on Trischka’s more recent albums.



Speaking of Daves, and Trischka, and of the bluegrass world which we explored after our recent trip to the Joe Val Bluegrass Festival: We mentioned loving their stage companion Tashina Clarridge in that entry, but I should also note that my own impression of her performance was supported by fellow fiddler Andy Reiner, of Blue Moose and the Unbuttoned Zippers, who I met over lunch in the lounge later that day – and given how friendly Andy was, and how avidly we touted their work as they prepared to take the mainstage as winners of the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival’s 2008 Emerging Artist Showcase, I’d be remiss if I didn’t note that after a single EP, and several years of smaller-scale YouTube and web releases, BMUZ finally released their first full-length album in November, and it’s a beautiful romp, combining old time americana with scandinavian folk and other influences to great effect. The Berklee College crowd just keeps impressing us, eh? Here’s a slippery teaser from Rousted, plus a track we posted way back when we first discovered them.

Bonus Track:



I love my wife, but let’s be honest: because she is one of those people who own one or two albums per mood, and because as a folk-listener she has a strong preference for soaring high-soprano celtic sirens, I don’t usually look to her to introduce me to new music. Nor do I usually end up listening long to recommendations from my mother, who trends towards the syrupy sweet end of folk.

Still, when I heard this version of Stevie Wonder’s Higher Ground filling the living room as a soundtrack to a recent cleaning binge, I couldn’t help but rush to the stereo to figure out how I missed this one in our recent Covered In Folk feature on Wonder’s songbook. Turns out that’s one-time Cover Lay Down feature artist, ex-Nickel Creek and current WPA member Sara Watkins on vox with Darol Anger’s American Fiddle Ensemble, whose “gloriously eclectic album” Republic of Strings was released was back in 2004, and then passed along to us by my mother just a few years ago. Guess that’ll teach me to keep my ears and mind open – and to digitize everything when I get it, so it shows up when I search iTunes.



Finally, as expected, our Valentine’s Day 2011 Single Song Sunday feature on the scottish ballad The Water Is Wide brought some fine versions out of the woodwork. Some of these submissions came from you, our readership, via comments and emails; standouts here included takes from Luka Bloom and Steve Goodman, both of whom we’ve covered before here and there in our tenure, and an amazing Emmylou Harris-led multi-artist take from Pete Seeger’s 90th Birthday Celebration at Madison Square Garden in May of 2009 which, frankly, just makes me ache for the availability and cashflow to attend such things.

Sheer chance landed us a brand new-to-us cover of the traditional tune, too: mere days after we posted the original entry, I found a set of CDs from dulcimer player and singer-songwriter Thomasina, a former Connecticut State Troubadour, in the mailbox, and her 2003 setting of the song, which is built around a previously recorded piano arrangement from friend Monica Robelotto, is a beautiful standout among strong tracks for those who prefer their folk a bit more formally phrased. Here’s the lot, with grateful thanks to all those who pass along the good stuff, and a recommendation that you also check out both the Cowboy Junkies’ and the Maura O’Connell versions of the song if you can find ‘em.





764 comments » | (Re)Covered, Sara Lov

Holiday Coverfolk 2010, Vol. 1: Christmas, (Re)Covered
(New and newly-found holiday songs from familiar faces)

November 27th, 2010 — 07:41 pm





Every year, I find my struggle to stave off Christmas Creep stymied by the drive to provide the meaningful and new before early-season eagerness can be replaced by weary resignation.

Oh, sure, I wish it were otherwise – after all, December has so much more to offer, from Hanukkah to the very real possibility of an early snow day. But being the last blogger on the block to cover Christmas risks hitting folks when their patience for the songs of the season has already been exhausted. And dropping the best of what we have to offer into an unwelcome lap frames fruitful artistry as fruitcake, heavy and unwanted, when it should arrive fresh and new as the December snow, sparkling and light with joy.

So yes, it’s early for the holiday samplers to begin in earnest. But then, we’ve but a month before these songs get shelved again, and all competitive urgency aside, giving artists their due time in your worthy ears does seem to warrant the immediacy.

In the spirit of the modern season, then, and in the interest of giving the people what they want to hear, here’s the first of what will surely be several holiday-themed features this year. We’ll start with ringing in the new, so that this year’s top crop can be given their full potential, with new work from familiar faces this weekend; stay tuned for old favorites, carols and coverage from young and newly-discovered artists, and more as the weeks progress.



The Indigo Girls – who we covered in full way back in September, 2009 – have waited a long time to take on the holiday spirit, perhaps because their early work, so heavily steeped in raw depression and rage, was anathema to the tone and tenor of the season.

But the long-standing duo has broadened their perspective since then, finding comfort and joy in creating anthems and courting hope where once they spewed forth only anger. Now, in keeping with their long-standing commitment to diversity and social justice, they present new seasonal record Holly Happy Days, a diverse set of songs from various sources and traditions, which yaws from sparse yet cheerful pop to dark folkrock. And though the synthesized production causes a few tracks to come off as cursory, the underlying pain of their earlier work still lingers appropriately in such tunes as Peace Child and the album-closing piano-led hymn There’s Still My Joy – providing balance to the larger mass of upbeat and hopeful numbers, including both their fast-paced take on a Klezmer Hanukkah tune, which would have fit easily into our midweek feature on the Guthrie family, and this mellow cowboy take on O Holy Night.



In his new holiday EP Christmas Gift, alt-country fave Scott Miller, who we’ve not yet covered, takes on John Prine, who we have. I don’t know as much about the Southern-based one-time rock star as I apparently should, though several Americana bloggers I trust seem to think he’s at the forefront of the modern canon. But the gentle gospel lilt he lends to Prine’s old chestnut makes for a pretty stunning transformation of an oft-covered favorite, while other cuts, from a “dueling banjos” arrangement of Joyful Joyful to a slow twangy cover of Neil Young’s Star Of Bethelem, along with several well-crafted originals, shine as well. If the Christmas Gift EP is typical of Miller’s work, he’s got one more fan in me as of right now.

For comparison’s sake:



Just One Angel, a new project spearheaded by Christine Lavin, is predominantly a collection of originals, from many of the same crowd that brought you the In My Room tribute album which we featured earlier this year. Lavin’s lighthearted spirit and tender nature are easily evident, with songs ranging from irreverent to holy, and like the aforementioned tribute, this one comes recommended especially for older folkies, who will recognize the names of many artists here.

Among the gems on Just One Angel, I found a Dar Williams cover from Darryl Purpose, who we first took note of in our July 2010 tribute to the Dave Carter songbook; a quick search of the archives brought me to the softspoken folksinger’s self-released 2002 Christmas album The Gift of the Magi (And Other Seasonal Stories), a delightful set of modern folk coverage which includes both the Dar tune and a second Carter cover. Head back into our own archives for features on both Dar covering and Dave covered, but don’t forget to pick up both Darryl’s holiday record and the Just One Angel compilation first.



Bonus points for Kate Taylor‘s take on Auld Lang Syne from the same compilation as above, originally released at the turn of the century as her very first single after a 20 year hiatus from musicmaking. We hit a few of our favorite covers of the perennial New Years tune last year around the turn of the calendar, but there’s a hidden secret bonus traceback here, too, for those who recognize the harmony vocalist on the track. Yes, that’s Kate’s more famous brother, alright. Uncredited here, but unmistakable.



Like many labels this time of year, Bedroom Community – that’s Sam Amidon‘s label, for those without encyclopedic recall – will be releasing its own collection of seasonal tunes, aptly entitled Yule, which in the case of the tiny Icelandic outlet in question means remixes, exclusive tracks, unreleased album outtakes and scores which trend towards the fragile, icy extremes of the indiefolk world, all available free to download exclusively with every purchase made through their web store until the New Year. The collection includes an acoustic version of Kedron, Amidon’s contribution to the 2008 nufolk spiritual gathering Help Me To Sing: Songs of the Sacred Harp; the tracks from Yule haven’t been released yet, but here’s the original release to warm the heart a bit before it drops.



Finally, and in other news: Sam Billen, whose kickstarter-funded holiday project we wrote about several weeks ago, reports that the album has been sent along to the printers as of last Friday, so expect the freebies to be available pretty soon; in the meanwhile, here’s a pair of delicate, sweetly soaring tracks from his 2008 holiday collection Merry Christmas, now available free to download from the website.


Oh, and in the interest of not repeating myself this year, while also providing fodder for those once again searching for just the right mix for the holiday season, here’s the full set of last year’s Christmas posts:



Cover Lay Down posts new coverfolk sets and features twice weekly without fail, come snow or unseasonal warmth. Coming soon: new holiday covers from new artists, acoustic favorites from yesteryear, and more holiday cheer!

1,280 comments » | (Re)Covered, Holiday Coverfolk

New Artists, (Re)Covered: Still-Rising Stars
Ruth Notman, Lucy Wainwright Roche, Fort DeClare & more!

October 16th, 2010 — 01:55 pm

The mailbox is stuffed to the gills with sweet sounds from artists we first noted as new and rising stars – a validating turn of events, proving that the young songwriters we feature in our New Artists, Old Songs series and elsewhere really are the next generation of folk music. Today, we celebrate our prescience with a look at the newest output from some increasingly familiar under-thirty voices, each well worth keeping on the radar screen.



Though we featured her famous families early in our incarnation as a folk coverblog, we first noted the emergence of Lucy Wainwright Roche when she appeared at Falcon Ridge Folk Fest in the summer of 2009. Back then, Lucy was newly committed to the music world, having hit the road in ’07 as a backup singer for brother Rufus after finishing a Masters in Ed., then going on to record a sweet pair of 8 song EPs; since then, she’s cropped up at least once more, thanks to an etherial duet with her father on his double-disc tribute to Charlie Poole. And now, with the release of her debut album Lucy, the youngest member of the Roche/Wainwright clan comes fully into her own.

But those who love her work with father Loudon, half-sibling Rufus, mother Suzzy of The Roches and others need not be dismayed: all appear on the aptly-titled album, along with the Indigo Girls and fellow Falcon Ridge Most Wanted showcase alums Girlyman. Lucy, which also includes a surprising hidden-track cover of Elliot Smith’s Say Yes recorded with nasal NPR stalwart Ira Glass, is a tour de force of wry, concrete songwriting, mixing her parent’s observational prowess with her own innocent voice and youthful optimism. See if you can identify the harmonies in this gorgeous new album-closing cover, then head over to Signature Sounds to sample and purchase Lucy for yourself.

Bonus tracks:

Previously on Cover Lay Down:
Lucy Wainwright Roche duets with her father on classic tune Beautiful



Like fellow new britfolk sensation Kate Rusby, Ruth Notman came to me through my own blog, via a Brit Femfolk guest post three summers ago while I was away at my annual folk festival journey; though our guest poster Divinyl, once a stalwart of collaborative music blog Star Maker Machine, has long gone absent from the web, Notman herself remains a voice to listen for, cranking out more and more sweet and tender music as she approaches her early twenties.

In the past year, in fact, Notman has recorded not one but two wonderful coversongs: a truly great recapture of Fairport Convention’s 40 year old french version of Dylan’s If You’ve Gotta Go, Go Now released last fall on her newest album The Life Of Lilly, and an even more recent take on the well-covered theme song to Weeds, recorded for a Pete Seeger tribute on BBC Radio 2.

Bonus tracks:

Recently on Cover Lay Down:
Ruth Notman covers Dougie MacLean’s Caledonia



Teenage sensation Sam Ramos, a.k.a. Fort deClare, made a splash here on Cover Lay Down just a few months ago with an exclusive look at his first recorded coverage tryptych; now he’s back with more of the delightful lo-fi indie electrofolk which won our hearts the first time around. Still delicate, but increasingly well-balanced in production and tenor, the new songs only reinforce our fandom, and their selection speaks loudly and clearly of Sam’s influences. With its thick, layered atmosphere and gentle repetitive elements, fans of Vashti Bunyan, Bon Iver, Sam Amidon, Iron and Wine, and that early Morning Benders covers album will find this an especially vibrant set – and Elise Krepcho’s vocal turn on Train Song beats Feist’s, too.



Meanwhile, with Christmas just around the corner, it’s great news indeed to find our favorite Sufjan-meets-Denison Witmer singer-songwriter Joel Rakes gearing up for another festive.mood.inducing.music holiday coverage sampler. This time, however, he’s looking for our input, letting fans vote to influence his yearly selection. And I’m thrilled to have a chance to advocate for both songwriter and song selection in one fell swoop.

We’ve featured the Philly-bred artist for several years running, thanks to his fun yearly takes on the classic hymns of the season; he’s sure to revisit some oldies this time around, too, but I’m gunning for some stripped-down coverage of more modern songs, like Paul McCartney’s Wonderful Christmas Time and Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas Is You. Won’t you help this coverblogger’s Christmas dreams come true? Head over to Joel’s blog to vote now, and pick up his newest full-band EP The Philadelphia Sessions, recorded just before his move to Nashville late last year, while you’re there. Here’s a pair of older Xmas covers to whet your whistle:



Finally, word of new work from local alt-country folkrockers Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers is always good news, and though they’ve already finished their swing through the lower half of the country, I’m happy to note that their Fall tour will soon bring them back to my own neighborhood as they continue to promote their newest record The Bear, which comes highly recommended. Kellogg himself is an over-thirty, and there’s nary a cover on The Bear, but the addition of fave young folkpop-slash-bluegrass sensation Sara Watkins on this very recent, somewhat raw live Townes Van Zandt* Rolling Stones cover, recorded from the crowd just last week in Pittsburgh, bring it into our under-thirty mix today.



*This version of Dead Flowers was sent along to Kellogg’s mailing list labeled as a Townes cover; it’s certainly derivative, but we know better, don’t we…

1,631 comments » | (Re)Covered, Joel Rakes, Lucy Wainwright Roche, New Artists Old Songs, Ruth Notman

(Re)Covered, Vol. XVIII: More covers of and from
Kate Wolf, Simon & Garfunkel, U2, Slowcoustic, Lucinda Williams and more!

September 5th, 2010 — 09:15 am

The last few weeks have been busy on my end, prompting us to stick to thematic posts and reposts. But the floodgates never close on the inbox passalongs and blogsources – and with almost three years of posts under our lifebelts, the rising tide of flotsam and jetsam falls easily into line with the water table.

Looks like it’s high time for another edition of our popular (Re)Covered series, featuring new and newly-discovered songs that bobbed to the surface just a little too late to make it into the original posts where they rightfully belonged.

According to her bio, late bloomer Sherry Austin came to songcraft after a full and fulfilling stint as a single mother left her with an empty nest and a heart full of love and music to share. And if her newest album Love Still Remains is any indication, we’re lucky to have her. The 14 track Kate Wolf tribute – 11 covers, two new settings of Kate’s unrecorded lyrics, and a gorgeous original that aptly echoes Kate’s soaring style – offers a consistent set of songs eminently worthy of its iconic muse, with rich contemporary production settings that only lift her sweet voice and gentle Americana approach that much higher.

Love Still Remains arrived this week too late to make it into our California Coverfolk feature on Kate Wolf, but serendipity smiles on those who shine, and truly, this well-imagined tribute deserves its own moment in the sun. Check it out, head over to Sherry’s website for her first two albums, and then follow up later for news of a release date.



Film producer Barry Mendel may not be a household name, but cover lovers owe him a great debt for his work with Seu Jorge during the filming of Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, when he helped the Brazilian actor and singer-songwriter learn and arrange the David Bowie covers that provided much of the movie’s on-screen soundtrack. Writes Barry,

    “as we were learning the songs and jorge would need time to roll cigarettes and what not, i’d pick up the guitar and play and he’d sing along, and when we were finishing the recording of all the bowie covers in the studio, his kind wife mariana insisted we record one of the songs she would hear me play with jorge singing along…so here is the boxer from 2004 w/ me playing and singing and jorge singing back-up and doing some whistling, to boot… “

The Simon and Garfunkel cover (yeah, we’ve covered ‘em) which came appended to Barry’s email is quite good for an amateur, actually. Barry said it’s never been heard outside of his presence until today, and added that he’d be honored if we’d be up to sharing it, but truly, it’s an honor to release it to the world.



I don’t usually go back to guest posts, but when Sandy of Slowcoustic – who sat in for us while I was off in the folk festival fields this summer – sent along this triplet of private-label tracks from countryfolk cowboy troubadour Bobby “Caleb” Coy, whose new disc Wild Desert Rose is due to drop Tuesday on the Yer Bird label, they definitely caught my ear. As Sandy notes, the covers are pretty lo-fi, but the songcraft and performance hiding under the mic distance and murmur is an apt reflection of the sparse presentation and raw potency of Caleb’s studio work, whetting the whistle for a full album of unmixed demos rife with strong, mournful dustbowl ballads and the simple, subtle power of the sepia-toned soul stripped bare.



We covered U2 for St. Patrick’s Day back in 2009; we’ve done the Bluegrass thing several times, most notably in and around my two favorite New England festivals Grey Fox and the Joe Val Fest. But we really don’t do country here at all, so putting the three together may not be the obvious choice. Still, if anyone can do it, it would just have to be with the help of cross-genre-covering bluegrass icons Del McCoury and Chris Thile, wouldn’t it?

To be fair, even on the tracks that don’t feature those particular bluegrass stars, Dierks Bentley‘s newest album Up On The Ridge sounds pretty damn good to me, country label or no. And Dierks is known for genre-crossing, touring with jam bands and recording with rock stars long before this most recent tribute to the roots and bluegrass influences which brought him to country in the first place. Songs by Dylan and Buddy and Julie Miller? Guest spots from Alison Krauss, Sam Bush, Rob Ickes, and Chris Stapleton of the Steeldrivers? Is it time to give the genre another look, or is this just another good country singer gone ‘grass? You be the judge.



Finally, as mentioned a few years ago on these pages in a feature on live in-studio coversources such as Daytrotter, KCRW, Hinah and World Cafe, I follow hundreds of blogs and webzines, most especially those radio stations and production spaces which post intimate regular sessions online. But I had totally missed American Songwriter’s ongoing in-studio series until just last week, when a random check-in on a few favorite sons and daughters led me to a whole heap of well-curated, stripped down EP-length sets from all over the singer-songwriter map. Score one more for the little guys.



Cover Lay Down posts new coverfolk features and LP-length songsets every Wednesday and Sunday, and the occasional otherday. We’re all about the artists, so if you like what you hear, please support the arts by clicking on the links provided to purchase and pursue your favorites.

Coming soon: a sweet set of folksongs pay tribute to yet another seminal indie band, a late summer EP has us looking back on two decades of coverage from an indie alt-rocker turned solo singer-songwriter with a penchant for classic rock, and Cover Lay Down turns three. And don’t forget to check out yesterday’s Townes, (Re)Covered feature!

1,359 comments » | (Re)Covered

Townes, (Re)Covered: Riding The Range
(plus two new tracks from Isobel Campbell and friends!)

September 4th, 2010 — 11:45 am

It’s a (Re)Covered weekend, with Townes today, and more from the wide world of coverage to come tomorrow. Happy long weekend, and enjoy the tunes!





As noted in last week’s comments, we’re just days away from the official release date for Riding The Range: the Songs of Townes van Zandt, a 20-track benefit for the QE2 Activity Centre, which “specialises in providing day activities and activity holidays for people with disabilities”. If you’re a regular reader, you’ve heard of the 20-track compilation before – we’ve been watching it closely since last winter, when the project was still in its development phase – but I’d be remiss if I didn’t take one more opportunity to celebrate the impending release of a tribute album bound for glory and our year’s end top ten.

Riding The Range is the brainchild of two men: Phil Oates, the director of the QE2 Centre, and musician Michael Weston King, a masterful songwriter and performer in his own right whose song Riding The Range, as performed by Townes himself, gives title to the tribute. And both Oates and King deserve kudos, for their combined curatorial efforts have paid off in spades. Riding the Range contains a particularly strong mix of US and UK singer-songwriters and countryfolk troubadours, including new and newly-recast recordings from Cover Lay Down favorites Devon Sproule, Boo Hewerdine, Peter Case, Danny Schmidt, and Jeffrey Foucault. And though a number of the featured players were new to me, including Johnny Dowd, The Magic Numbers, and King himself, the resulting collection is consistently excellent, even breathtaking – no mean feat, considering the album’s length and diversity.

Previous nods to Riding The Range here at Cover Lay Down have included our recent Folk Couples feature, last month’s (Re)Covered, Vol. XVII, and last week’s topical post containing songs about shoes; each contains a track from the album, and you’re welcome to head back into the archives for a few bonus cuts. But pre-orders are finally open, so place your order today, and rest easy in the knowledge that by buying Riding The Range, you’re getting a great album, and helping a great cause to boot.



Seems the cowboy troubadour is due to haunt our (Re)Covered series ad infinitum; even without Riding on the Range on the cusp of greatness, we’ve already looked back twice upon our original Covered in Folk tribute to Townes Van Zandt. But this pair of Townes covers from Hawk, Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan‘s newest release, are just stunning. Snake Song is a dark alt-countryfolk masterpiece, but don’t miss Isobel’s duet with young second-generation singer-songwriter Willy Mason on No Place To Fall, a slow country waltz which plays masterfully off the tension between Isobel’s breathy soprano and Mason’s rich, echoey campfire baritone. The album is amazing, too.

964 comments » | (Re)Covered, Townes van Zandt, Tribute Albums

(Re)Covered, vol. XVII: more covers of and from
Springsteen, Townes, Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, Disney & more

July 18th, 2010 — 10:49 am





By the time you read this, we’ll have been in the fields for two days already, camping out just a short hop from the Falcon Ridge Folk Fest mainstage while we help build the place from the ground up – and I’ll have spent Saturday at Grey Fox Bluegrass Fest, too, so it’s a reasonable bet that I’ve got a starter burn across my neck and nose, and a camera full of close-up press-access shots and shaky video of the best cover sets I could find.

I’ll have a lovely guest post or two for you later in the week, as usual. But in cleaning house for my absence, I unearthed a whole waiting list of coverage from the usual sources – artists, commenters, labels and more – that calls back to the archives. So rather than leaving you emptyhanded, here’s yet another edition of our popular (Re)Covered series, wherein we recover new and newly-discovered songs that surfaced just a little too late to make it into the original posts where they rightfully belonged.



There’s plenty of Springsteen covers in the ether, and so we’ve covered him plenty here, in thematic posts and in a compendium shared way back in September of last year. Most recently, we even included three covers of I’m On Fire to close out our set of songs for May’s heat wave. But the canon continues to attract the best and brightest, as evidenced by my recent serendipitous discovery of Erik Balkey’s amazingly transformative take on Born in the USA unearthed while looking for covers for our recent Dave Carter tribute.

Since any excuse to pass along the goods is good indeed, I’ve included yet another backstage take from the MVYRadio SXSW archives, and a bonus cut from Catie Curtis found on In My Room, a tribute album which we featured back in our first look at this year’s Tributes and Cover Compilations – a feature which also included Jeffrey Foucault and Mark Erelli’s take on Springsteen’s Johnny 99 from recent collaborative cover compilation Seven Curses.



One of the best thing about blogging is you, the reader – especially when you share covers I haven’t heard yet in the wake of a particularly interesting post. Case in point: this live take on American Tune, recorded live at Kerrville a few years ago, which was sent along via email after we shared ten versions of the seminal Paul Simon song for our July 4th Single Song Sunday. Kenny White‘s new to me, too, so head on over to his site to learn more…



Similarly, “friend and fan” Ted emailed the week after our recent feature on young Couples of the Folkworld with a take on Paul Curreri’s Letting It Be from singer-songwriter Daniel Boonelight, and I’m greatly appreciative for the introduction. Daniel’s a true-blue newcomer, with a few other covers and some nicely crafted originals up at YouTube but nothing formal recorded yet as far as I can tell, but his earnest voice and gentle, generally acoustic tendencies have real potential, and his preference for video-based recording reveals an organic approach to music that dovetails nicely with the modern digital trend towards realism and authenticity.

Though it seems likely that Boonelight would prefer that you take a gander at the VideoSongs, the tracks hold together well on their own as sonic landscapes, too. So here’s both: two video covers – the Curreri cover and a rough take on Ryan Adams’ Sweet Carolina recorded with friends – with stripped-from-video mp3s for the win.




We first took on the Townes Van Zandt songbook back in October, but the Townes covers have been coming fast and furious this year, thanks in no small part to the impending release of Riding The Range: A Tribute to Townes Van Zandt, coming this September on Righteous 23 Records to benefit the UK’s QE2 Activity Centre.

This week, a last-minute mailbag submission from Vermont singer-songwriter Hip Hatchet put me in mind of Loretta, Townes’ paean to a sweet young barroom girl, if only because he’s got a great cover of the tune on his MySpace page – one which, he claims, was inspired by John Prine’s cover of the song, as heard on Poet, the 2001 country tribute to the cowboy troubadour. Hip Hatchet, whose lovely new album Men Who Share My Name, available for just two bucks on Bandcamp, is on target to become one of my favorite field listens during my impending absence, thanks to shades of Nick Drake’s performance and songsmithing, Arborea’s rural atmosphere, and a delightful chamberfolk-meets-nufolk production dynamic, full of rich horns and strings.

But it turns out I’ve got quite a few covers of this one. So in addition to Hip Hatchet’s mellow basso version, how about a growly back porch blues from the coming Riding The Range tribute, a slowcore indie lullaby take from Fort King, Ralph Stanley II’s bluegrass turn, and Steve Earle’s old timey alt-country cover from his own recent Townes tribute.



A double-dipper here from Jeff Pianki, who we first featured way back in February in honor of his stunning Loggins and Messina cover, and who has just released his newest cover: a delightfully low-key and gentle take on The Jungle Book monkey song I Wanna Be Like You, perfect as a follow-up to April’s Disney Songs post. Also solid, for those interested in Jeff’s songwriting skills: Joe Hertler‘s cover of Jeff’s Seeds In The Ground, which showed up on the same page just a few months ago.

Hello Bones, Pianki’s debut full-length, remains impending, though you can download demos of the songs and a b-sides prerelease EP cutely titled Hello Scones at jeffpianki.com; personally, I can’t wait to see what he does with the production, but the demos hold together nicely as a preview. Head over to Jeff’s Tumblr for more, but be warned: you’ll definitely fall in love with the sunny, sweet original love songs posted July 5 and June 25.



Finally, though Joni Covers week ended last Sunday over at the theme-driven, multi-member music blog Star Maker Machine, I’m particularly proud of my own postings, which included two chilly, etherial folkpop takes on Joni’s Blue and three lovely, delicate turns on All I Want – only one of which had actually come from our own Joni Covers post way back in June of last year. As noted above, I’m off to Falcon Ridge this week and next with three other members of the collaborative, so posting may be a bit sparse over there, but I’m pretty sure the others put up a few scheduled posts to go on in their absence, so you’re still missing out if you’re not a regular visitor or feedfollower.

Here’s two faves from the Joni Covers set, one from those selfsame MVYRadio archives, and one which was actually posted by fellow SMM contributor and folkblogger Darius of Oliver Di Place, whose tent is waiting for him alongside our pop-up camper as we speak. Can’t wait to meet him in person…

Cover Lay Down posts new coverfolk sets and feature articles every Sunday and Wednesday without fail – even when we’re out standing in our field.

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