Category: originals


Bluegrass Coverfolk: The Joe Val Festival (Covers of Elvis, Waylon Jennings, The Grateful Dead, Steve Goodman, Gospel and more!)

February 18th, 2008 — 12:49 am


By most popular definitions, bluegrass isn’t folk music. Where modern singer-songwriter folk teeters on the edge of pop, rock, and blues, today’s bluegrass bands find radioplay on the country end of the dial, if at all. And though there are certainly plenty of crossover alt-country and Americana musicians out there who are welcome at both bluegrass and folk festivals, most music festivals tend to be firmly either/or.

But as I’ve noted previously, folk and bluegrass have much in common. Both stem from the same early American folk tree; both depend heavily on the acoustic guitar; both use traditional forms of rhyme, verse structure, trope and storytelling in their lyrics and song structure. Wikipedia lists bluegrass as a form of country music, it’s true, but it also refers to it as a form of American roots music, or Americana – the category which encompasses the “folk” forms of American music.

Which is to say: we’re bluegrass fans here at Cover Lay Down. And though owning up to this has probably already lost me some hardcore folkies over the months since we started, I make no apologies for the bluegrass among the folk. The acoustic nature of the two forms, and their shared roots in African-American blues, British folk ballads, and appalachian music, makes for a clear commonality, even if the sounds are clearly different.

One significant distinction between bluegrass and modern folk music is the vastly different ways in which the two forms approach harmony. Where folk music performance tends to prioritize the singer-songwriter, both as vocalist and instrumentalist, the best bluegrass is about balance – between instruments, and among voices. The bluegrass sound is thus typified by close harmonies that span the range from high male tenor to bass, and a wide range of acoustic stringed instruments – typically bass, guitar, banjo, mandolin, and fiddle – which echo that vocal range, and, through alternating-beat use of bass and percussive high-stringed chords, provide an equally rich, full sound.

Bluegrass gets a bad rap in the world of covers — all those anonymous session musicians cutting albums of Phish and Nine Inch Nails and Led Zeppelin covers just to pay the rent doesn’t help. But bluegrass music is much more than country music’s poor country cousin. The covers you’ll find featured in today’s post are the real deal, performed with love and respect. Even if you’re not usually the bluegrass type, I highly recommend giving them a try.


To those unschooled in the history of bluegrass music, the Framingham, MA, Sheraton might seem an especially odd choice for the International Bluegrass Music Association‘s 2006 Event of the Year. But the popular stereotype which casts bluegrass music as a form of southern music belies a rich and long-standing tradition of New England bluegrass. And remembering that Scots-Irish dance tunes and English ballads are but one of several primary influences on the bluegrass form does help one come to terms with the fact that the Sheraton is built like a giant Irish castle, and thus looks more like a venue for a jousting tournament than a site for a bluegrass festival.

Once you get over the strange dissonance between the snow-capped castle turrets outside and the sound of a thousand banjos, basses, high tenors and mandolins inside, The Joe Val Bluegrass Festival is a great gig. Incredibly, festival sponsor the Boston Bluegrass Association manages to successfully reproduce the feel of a great outdoor festival indoors in the dead of winter. The atmosphere is infectiously fun, from the ubiquitous hallway jam sessions to the ballroom mainstage to the conference rooms stuffed with product demos and instrumental workshops.

And the musical talent is out of this world. The Joe Val Festival, which celebrates the life of seminal 1960′s New England bluegrass mandolin player Joe Val, attracts a significant share of IBMA award winners, both old and new. As such, it’s a good way to whet one’s appetite for the cornucopia of summer festivals which pepper New England in the warmer months. And it’s a great vehicle for us to consider the place of bluegrass in the spectrum of American folk forms.

Today, we feature a select set of covers from the artists I’ve been lucky enough to see at Joe Val in the past two years. Together, they explore the surprisingly vast potential of the bluegrass sound, running the gamut from country singer-songwriter (Claire Lynch, Miller’s Crossing) to gospel (The Bluegrass Gospel Project, David Parmley), from old-school (Seldom Scene) to new school (The Grascals, Steep Canyon Rangers). It was a genuine pleasure to see them all, and it’s a genuine pleasure to share their work with you. (PS: I’ve saved the best of the bunch for the bonus song, so don’t forget to read all the way through.)

As always, all album and artist links lead directly to band and artist websites, where albums can be purchased, tours can be charted, and fan appetites can be whetted. If you live in New England, you might also be interested in knowing that the Boston Bluegrass Union, which sponsors the Joe Val Festival, puts on great shows throughout the year.

Today’s bonus bluegrass artists stand alone, because they deserve it:

  • The SteelDrivers, Higher Than The Wall (orig. Patty Loveless)
      Though this song was first recorded by Patty Loveless on Your Way Home, Higher Than The Wall was written by Mike Henderson and Chris Stapleton of roots/blues bluegrass band The SteelDrivers, so it’s not technically a cover. But discovering this band at this year’s festival was by far the most incredible musical experience I have had in months, and I just couldn’t resist sharing this live track. I cannot recommend any music higher than the new self-titled album from The SteelDrivers. Heck, I’m so impressed, I’m going to totally break the cover mold: here’s a second original song of theirs from that same live session.

  • The SteelDrivers, If It Hadn’t Been For Love (original; live 11/2006)

    Coming soon on Cover Lay Down: fuzzfolkie Mary Lou Lord, covers of Donovan songs, and a review of SXSW 2002 Best New Artist Caroline Herring‘s new album Lantana. Y’all come back now, y’hear?

  • 989 comments » | Bluegrass Gospel Project, Claire Lynch, David Parmley, Dolly Parton, Miller's Crossing, originals, Seldom Scene, Steep Canyon Rangers, Subgenre Coverfolk, The Grascals, The SteelDrivers

    Chris Smither Covers: John Hiatt, The Grateful Dead, Little Feat, Chuck Berry, and Dylan

    October 28th, 2007 — 10:32 am

    I seriously considered Chris Smither for our Covered in Folk series. After all, for much of his forty-year career Smither was a total unknown outside a very small community…unless you happened to know who wrote Bonnie Raitt’s hit Love Me Like A Man. Smither has cred as a performer in his own right; he deserves to be touted for his own deceptively simple musicianship, not just his writing. The problem is, while his songs have been pretty consistently out in the open since he started out, his career path yaws like a ship in a storm.

    Smither joined the Cambridge, MA folk scene in the late sixties, and hit the national radar in the early seventies with a spate of albums that showcased his emerging songwriting and raw, bluesy swamp folk style. But he faded into relative obscurity by the end of the decade, touring sporadically, releasing only one album in the eighties while his songs lived on in the hands of others. For a while, it looked like another promising musician had gotten lost.

    But when Smither came back in 1991 with intimately recorded live album Another Way To Find You, it put him right back in the groove, winning awards and filling bars across the country. Since then, he’s been prolific and celebrated; today, where the Dixie Chicks still sell more Patty Griffin than Patty Griffin, Chris Smither has transcended life as “the guy who wrote that song” to become a headliner again, reemerging from the dark eighties to impress a new generation with his foot-stomping blues/folk guitar style, his throat-scratching Florida by way of New Orleans tenor drawl, and his interpretation of both his own well-crafted tunes and familiar standards from the folk canon.

    At his best, Smither’s signature sound is a holdover from the days of Leadbelly, before blues and folk music split into distinct genres. Like those that came before him, he can play fast and loose with tempo, speeding through phrases on the guitar in raw emotive power. What distinguishes his style from the great grandaddies of interpretive fingerplucking is a preference for fastfinger slide over chord-playing, and a mellow, weathered grin all his own that shines through his lyrical play to flavor even the most wistful of folksongs.

    The edgy, bluesy style Smither favors in performance is best featured on Another Way to Find You, in all its live, foot-stomping glory; his produced work shows an equally gifted ability to play the power of that wailing voice and sweet guitarplay off a full wash of sound. Here’s a full house of covers from his second wave of fame — a trio of solid tracks from Another Way, and a pair of more recent, more produced cuts — just to prove that you can rise again:

    • Friend of the Devil (orig. Grateful Dead)
    • Down in the Flood (orig. Bob Dylan)
    • Tulane (orig. Chuck Berry)
    • Rock and Roll Doctor (orig. Little Feat)
    • Real Fine Love (orig. John Hiatt)

    Chris Smither sells all his in-print works, from 1984′s amazing It Ain’t Easy to last year’s solid Leave The Light On, through his website, so you know where he’d prefer you buy them. Unfortunately, if you’d like to go back to his work from before the resurrection, you’ll have to scour the used recordshops — but they’re well worth the vintage price, if you find one in good condition.

    Today’s bonus coversongs are a full house, too:

    • Smoothjazz chanteuse Diana Krall covers Smither’s Love Me Like A Man
    • Bonnie Raitt covers Love Me Like A Man, too (live, from Road Tested)
    • Chris Smither’s original 1970 version of Love You Like A Man
      (our first NON-cover here on Cover Lay Down!)
    • Smither makes Roly Sally’s Killin’ the Blues his own
    • Shawn Colvin covers Smither’s version of Killing the Blues

    1,106 comments » | Bob Dylan, Bonnie Raitt, Chris Smither, Chuck Berry, Diana Krall, Grateful Dead, John Hiatt, Little Feat, originals, Shawn Colvin